You haven't given us enough code to see where your problem is, but I'd suggest that you use strictures (use strict; use warnings;) and use a Perl for loop rather than the while loop:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $average = 3;

for my $i (1 .. $average) {
    print qq~dibbly\n~;
}
[download]

Prints:

dibbly
dibbly
dibbly
[download]

Not sure how much code you need but here is the hole scripts. From the testing I have done I know the problem is in the while loop.

#!/user/perl/
use CGI q~:standard~;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
use strict;
use DBI;
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
my ($dbh, $sth, $filename, @votes, $average, $i);
$filename = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
$dbh = DBI -> connect ('dbi:ODBC:', '', '') or die $DBI::errstr;
$sth = $dbh -> prepare (qq~select One, Two, Three, Four, Five, TotalVo
+tes from FanRatings where Title = ?~) or die $DBI::errstr;
$sth -> execute ($filename) or die $DBI::errstr;
@votes = $sth -> fetchrow_array;
if (defined $votes[0]) {
    #$average = (($votes[0] + $votes[1] + $votes[2] + $votes[3] + $vot
+es[4]) / $votes[5]);
    $average = 3;
    $i = 0;
    while ($i > 0 and $i <= $average) {
        print qq~<img src="http://www.ffinfo.com/images/misc/starfull.
+gif" width="15" height="15" alt="Full Star" style="vertical-align: bo
+ttom" /> ~;
        $i++
    }
    if ($average =~ /\d\.\d/) {
        print qq~<img src="http://www.ffinfo.com/images/misc/starhalf.
+gif" width="15" height="15" alt="Half Full Star" style="vertical-alig
+n: bottom" />~;
        $i = $i + 0.5
    }
    while ($i <= 4) {
        
        print qq~<img src="http://www.ffinfo.com/images/misc/starempty
+.gif" width="15" height"15" alt="Empty Star" style="vertical-align: b
+ottom" /> ~;
        $i++
    }
} else {
    $i = 0;
    while ($i <= 4) {
        print qq~<img src="http://www.ffinfo.com/images/misc/starempty
+.gif" width="15" height"15" alt="Empty Star" style="vertical-align: b
+ottom" /> ~;
        $i++
    }
    print qq~<br />Be the first to rate this Fan Creation.~;
}
$dbh -> disconnect();
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I will look into switching to a for loop but for my feature info can a while loop handle two tests?

I believe it is a logic error.

The code in the while block does not execute because the while condition is false.

$average = 3;
$i = 0;
while ($i > 0 and $i <= $average)
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In order for the while condition to be true, $i must be either 1, 2 or 3. But $i starts at 0.

Do you really want this?

while ($i >= 0 and $i <= $average)
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Get into the habit of using strict.
If $i=0, you will never enter the loop which requires $i > 0
Change to $i >= 0

my $average = 3;
my $i = 0;
while ($i >= 0 and $i <= $average) {
  print qq~<img src=".... /> ~;
  $i++
}
[download]

Why do you test $i > 0 - it will always fail on the first iteration and you never get another. More likely the logic of what you want is:

use strict;
use warnings;

for my $avg (0, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 3, 5) {
    my $average = $avg;
    my $stars = 0;
    
    print "$average: ";
    
    while ($stars < int ($average)) {
        print "*";
        ++$stars;
    }
    
    if ($stars <= $average - 0.5) {
        print "+";
        ++$stars;
    }
    
    while ($stars < 5) {
        print ".";
        $stars++;
    }
} continue { 
    print "\n";
}
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---

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

use strict;
use warnings;
use HTML::Template;
my $t = HTML::Template->new( 
    filehandle => \*DATA, 
    die_on_bad_params => 0 );
my ( $average, @fullstars, @emptystars );
$average = 3.7; # hard-coded for testing
for ( 1 .. 5 ) {
    if ( $_ <= $average ) {
        push( @fullstars, 1 );
    }
    else { push( @emptystars, 1 ) }
}

if ( int($average) != $average ) {
    $t->param( halfstar => 1 );
    shift(@emptystars);
}
$t->param(
    fullstars  => \@fullstars,
    emptystars => \@emptystars
);
print $t->output();

__DATA__
<tmpl_loop name="fullstars">
    <img src="fullstar">
</tmpl_loop>
<tmpl_if name="halfstar">
    <img src="halfstar">
</tmpl_if>
<tmpl_loop name="emptystars">
    <img src="emptystar">
</tmpl_loop>
[download]