Dearest perl Monks, I wrote this simple subroutine in order to add users to a small network program to which I needed to add authentication . When I call the subroutine, the user enters both username and password , the password is encrypted, and the script prints the combination.Or, that is what is SUPPOSED to happen; The problem is that the entire combination string ,stored in $out,does not print. As it is below it prints ".:encryptedpassword" instead of "username:encryptedpassword" .If I set $out to $username only it just prints the username. if I set $out to $username\n, it prints $username MINUS the first two chars.. I have tried turning off line buffering on the output filehandle, PASSWD, and this does not appear to be the problem. The code is below, any help would be appreciated, thanks :

sub adduser{
  $passwd = shift;
  my ($out,$pw);
  my @salt = ("A".."Z","a".."z","0".."9","/",",",".");
 USER:{
    print CLIENT "New UserName:";
    my $username=<CLIENT>;
    if ($username =~ /\S+/){ chomp $username;}
    else{goto USER; }
    $out = "$username" ;
  }
 PASS:{
    print CLIENT "New User Password:";
    my $password=<CLIENT>;
    if ($password =~ /\S+/){ chomp $password;}
    else{goto USER; }
    my $salt = $salt[rand @salt].$salt[rand @salt];
    my  $pw = crypt($password,$salt);
    $out = "$out:$pw\n";       
  }    
  open PASSWD, ">> $passwd" 
    || die" problem appending to $passwd :$! \n";
  print PASSWD "$out";
  close PASSWD;
}
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