Aha! Thanks for pointing out the use of lt vs. <. I've noticed it was odd before, but didn't pause to think about what the consequences are. There is another similar loop earlier in the script that looks like this:

    while (length($extnum) lt $numlength) {
        $extnum = "0" . $extnum;
    }

[download]

where $numlength can potentially be set to 4. Again, $extnum is unlikely to be a very long string, so this doesn't seem to be the culprit either, but I'll have to comb through the script again to see if other abuses of lt could have caused the bug.

Thanks for the prompt reply!

In reply to Re^2: Can scalar representation cause infinite loops? by Anonymous Monk
in thread Can scalar representation cause infinite loops? by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.