This question should have read: I've been tearing my hair out all afternoon (In preparation to becoming a monk?) and can't find the problem. Is there a difference how PERL handles a variable going into a file vs. one going to <STDOUT>? I thought they were both just filehandles except that <STDOUT> is the default.

What's been happening is that the value of $lineout prints to <STDOUT> as "elephant = gray" but prints to the file as "elephant = grey". (It's test data :-) As you can see, there is no code between setting the variable and displaying/writing it. 
open (FILE2, ">$file");
   foreach $setting (@settings) {
      foreach $item (@lines) {
         chomp($setting);
         ($setMode, $setSect, $setPair) = split(/ *\| */, $setting);
         ($setName, $setVal) = split(/ *= */, $setPair);
         print "$setMode||$setSect||$setPair\n";
         chomp($item);
         if ($item =~ m/ *= */) {
            ($temp1, $temp2) = split(/ *= */, $item);
            if ($setName eq $temp1) {
               $temp2 = $setVal;
               }
#problem area
               $lineout = "$temp1 = $temp2\n";
               print FILE2 "$lineout";
               print "$lineout";
#end problem area
             } else {
               print "$item\n";
               print FILE2 "$item\n";  
               }     
            }
close (FILE2);

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I know the file is being written too, because it is being changed

In reply to Hopefully a simple mistake by ChuckularOne

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