Greetings monks. I am having difficulties with the following code, in which I am trying to conditionally assign a variable based on matching the first character of a string contained in 2 other variables. 
     if ($B1=~ m/^*/ | $B2=~ m/^*/) {
       my $type;
       $type eq "S";
     } else {
       $type eq "I";
     }

[download]
Basically, I am searching two other variables, if either of them have "*" as the first character, then variable $type should be set to the character variable S, otherwise it should be set to I. The error message I am getting is: Global symbol "$type" requires explicit package name at /home/radon00/amr/sandbox/alpha/SNPtagger.pl line 48. Global symbol "$type" requires explicit package name at /home/radon00/amr/sandbox/alpha/SNPtagger.pl line 51. So I think the problem has to do with the fact that I am using the $type variable which is declared in the if block, and the $B1 and $B2 variables which were declared outside of the if block. I'm just not sure what the solution is. Here is the entire code just in case some context is needed: 
my $SNP_FILE="SNP.test.out"; # Will be $out in future, just hardcoded 
+to SNP.report for testing now.


open (LINES,"<$SNP_FILE") || die ("Could not open file! \n"); # Read S
+NP File
<LINES>;

while ($SNP_FILE=<LINES>) 
  {
    
     my ($contig, $PP, $UPP, $Cons, $Cov, $Conflicts, $B1, $B2)=split(
+'\t', $SNP_FILE); #Split line of SNP File
     my $ratio=sprintf("%.2f",($Conflicts/$Cov)); #Creates new variabl
+e of ratio of Conflict Count/Total Coverage

     $PP=$PP+1; # Bump padded position coordinate by 1, as gap4 coordi
+nates are off by 1 base compared to bank file
     $Cons=~ s/-/*/; # Replace - with gap4 pad notation in consensus v
+ariable
     $B1=~ s/-/*/;   # Replace - with gap4 pad notation in Base 1 vari
+able
     $B2=~ s/-/*/;   # Replace - with gap4 pad notation in Base 2 vari
+able
     chomp $B2;
     $contig=~ s/Contig/#/; # Replace contig with number sign so gap4 
+can recognize contig identifier
     if ($B1=~ m/^"*"/ or $B2=~ m/^"*"/) {
       my $type eq "S";
     } else {
       my $type eq "I";
     }
my $type;
     print "$contig $PP $Cons $Cov $Conflicts $B1 $B2 $ratio $type \n"
+;
 }
close (LINES);

[download]
Thanks for the help in advance!

In reply to Setting Conditional Variable Based on Partial Match by Osiris1975

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