Update: Forget about my comment. I put your code in one directory, but did a perl -c with a script that has the same name in a different directory. Need morning coffee. This has no problem with Perl 5.8.7, at least from syntax point of view.

Update2: What you want is something like this:

    if ($line !~ /INSERT INTO Message_pool/) {
      #Do nothing
    }
    elsif ($line =~ /^.{0,50}CREATE TABLE\s([A-Z|a-z|_]{5,40})\s.{1,10
+0}/) {
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Other than the () issue. The way to express not match, is !~, not "not =~". By the way, if you are really fond of "not", to make the syntax right, you can say:

    if (not ($line =~ /INSERT INTO Message_pool/)) {
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