I think the idea of "leave it alone" is where you get confused. next means skip the rest of the loop, so the line containing best1collect will not be printed to OUT. Without referring to "leaving it alone," ask yourself these questions: 1) should the lines containing "best1collect" be printed? If yes, then you don't want to call next in that first elsif. 2) Should the lines containing "syslogd" be printed? If no, then you probably do want to call next after printing $newline.

Remember, you're reading from one file and writing to another. Any lines that you skip will not be written to that second file. That's why "leave it alone" is the wrong way to think about it.

        } elsif ( $line =~ m/best1collect/) {
                next;
[download]

This will omit lines containing 'best1collect' from the input file. Instead I think what you want is to set a flag so that later when you see 'syslogd' you do not insert the bgs stuff. Is that what you want to do?

Yes if =~ m/bestcollect/ That means the line is ok. So, leave it alone. if there is no $line. Then insert the here documnet $bgs before 'syslogd' Thanks

I want it to do nothing if the $line has /bestcollect/ It prints every if elseif. I want it to just do one thing. If the line is wrong. fix it. If it isn't there print the $bgs stuff. Thanks,

Then if I put else {next}; That Totally screws up the out file.

Yes, it immediately skips the rest of the current loop body and moves to the next iteration. That means nothing will print for the current iteration. If that's not what you want, remove the next.

That is what I want. I want it to leave the file alone. But, it removes the line. leaving bgs) ;; on the next line. then adds the $bgs here document also.

   while ($line = <SH>){
        if($line =~ m/$agent/){
                $line = $collect;
#this line will be replaced by the $collect line in the file OUT

        } elsif ( $line =~ m/best1collect/) {
                next;
#this line will NOT appear in the file OUT, because you 
#don't reach the print command. If you want this line in
#the OUT file, I suggest, you use a continue block. See at
#the end.

        } elsif ($line =~ m/'syslogd'\)/){
                my $newline = $. + 3;
                $newline = $bgs;
                print OUT "$newline\n";
# this line will appear in the OUT file , but have the 
# bgs line inserted before.
        }
# all other lines will be copied.
     print OUT $line;
     print $line;
    }
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   while ($line = <SH>){
        if($line =~ m/$agent/){
                $line = $collect;
        } elsif ( $line =~ m/best1collect/) {
                next;
        } elsif ($line =~ m/'syslogd'\)/){
                my $newline = $. + 3;
                $newline = $bgs;
                print OUT "$newline\n";
        }
    } continue {
     print OUT $line;
     print $line;
    }
[download]

Ok,
it doesn't remove that line and if the $line isn't there. It put the $
+bgs here doc there.

But, if it has the wrong $line. 
 if($line =~ m/$agent/){
                $line = $collect;
It fixes it and also adds the $bgs here.

same with if the $line is right.  It doesn't remove the line anymore. 
+ But, it adds the $bgs here to that file too.

Thanks!
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#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/su - patrol /usr/adm/best1_default/bgs/scripts/best1collect -
+q >> $1 2>&1
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and name it 'start-bgs' in some directory. Then do the same for all other other case blocks and name them similarly. Then your script just becomes:

#!/bin/sh
...
# set $agent to the agent you want to start
cmdpath=$cmd_dir/start-$agent
if ! -x $cmdpath; then
    echo Error - start script $cmdpath not found
    exit 1
fi
$cmdpath $LOG # pass any relevant parameters here
[download]

Then when you need to add/change/delete agents you are just replacing files instead of trying to edit a few lines in a file. This should make things a lot easier to manage, especially if you have several hundred files to update.

It's a crazy idea!

That makes sense. But, all the files are different. I can only change or add those lines to them. Thanks,