Hi sluggo,

Your first example of pars0r immediately above has a subtle bug in it -- you have my $counter++ instead of $counter++.   This has the effect of creating a new instance of $counter, which is why you'll be printing "$vol_to_parse got got\n" every time you get a match:

sub pars0r{
    foreach my $volume (@raw_data) {
        if ($volume =~ /$vol_to_parse/) {
            my $counter++;            # Create new $counter, set it to
+ 1
            if($counter <= 1){        # This will always be true
                print "$vol_to_parse got got \n"; 
            }
            elsif ($counter > 1 ) {   # Block will never be executed
                next; # or break; ?
            } 
        }
    }
}
[download]

If you take out the $my it should function correctly.

Your second example of pars0r immediately above has a different bug; even if you change the if ($counter >= 1) to if ($counter <= 1) as I think you meant, once you've found the first match, and until you find a second one, you will always print "$vol_to_parse got got\n":

sub pars0r{
    foreach my $volume (@raw_data) {
        if ($volume =~ /$vol_to_parse/){
            $counter++;            # Set counter to one the first time
        }
        if ($counter <= 1){        # Changed ">= 1" to "<= 1"
            # This block executes after the first match, and up to
            # the next non-match, which is NOT what you want!
            ##
            print "$vol_to_parse got got \n";
        }
        elsif( $counter > 1){
            next;
        }
    }
}
[download]

Why not just do something like this:

sub pars0r{
    my $b_got_match = 0;        # Initialize boolean to FALSE
    foreach my $volume (@raw_data) {
        if ($volume =~ /$vol_to_parse/){
            if (!$b_got_match) {
                # Only print the match once, as $b_got_match gets
                # set once we print it, and then this conditional
                # will never again get executed.
                ##
                print "$vol_to_parse got got\n";
                $b_got_match = 1;
            }
            # We can still track the total number of matches
            ++$counter;
        }
    }
}
[download]