What next?

Good question. I'm somewhat stumped...inside or outside of the loop, it should work the same way. Here's the code I tried (I used echo '' ) around it since I don't have aml_read)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $TTYFIRST = 2;
my $TTYLAST = 17;
my $start_ts = '"12/04/2000 07:00:00"';
my $end_ts = '"12/04/2000 08:00:00"';
my $selectedserver = 'ftwaeipd0001';

for (my $i = $TTYFIRST; $i <= $TTYLAST; $i++) {
        Tty_check($i,$start_ts,$end_ts,$selectedserver);
}

sub Tty_check {

        my $tty_string = 'tty'.$_[0];
        my $tty = qx{echo 'aml_read /l trace /h $_[3] /a commproc /s $
+_[1]  /b $_[2] /d all | egrep -c -e $tty_string'};

        chomp($tty);
        print "<TR ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP>\n";
        print "<TD>$tty_string</TD>\n";
        print "<TD>$tty</TD>\n";
        print "</TR>\n";
}
[download]

And it appear to do the Right Thing. Does it for you?

If so, how about trying to replace the big command with a smaller one. Try just running egrep on a file, or aml_read without piping through egrep. (Still do all of this inside the loop.) I'm guessing now, because this code should work.