It may have nothing to do with scoping at all. Basic rule is that a my variable is visible to everything in the block in which it's declared, so as long as your "if" is within the while loop, $date will be visible. I'd point a finger (tentatively) at

/(\w{3}\s+\w{3}\s+\d{1,2}/;
my $date = $1;
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For two reasons: one is that it's not well-formed. You should be getting an error on that (There's no closing paren). So if this is cut-n-paste, that's a problem right there. Second problem is that (assuming there is a closing paren in the actual code) if that regex doesn't match, $1 won't be set, and it's no surprise that you get nothing when you print out the value of $date.

You *are* running with -w and strict on, aren't you? The present case is a VERY good example of why you should; if $date doesn't get set and you try to print it, -w will tell you it's uninitialized. And if $date has gone out of scope, strict will complain about it not being declared. So: use -w and strict : really.

The fix, assuming you want to ignore lines that don't match your date-finding pattern:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

# stuff

# (in while loop)
while (<my_file>) {
    next unless my ($date) =~ /(\w{3}\s+\w{3}\s+\d{1,2})/;
    # stuff
    if ($foo) {
        print "Date is $date\n";
    }
    # more stuff
}
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HTH!

while (<NEW_HIST>){
                /^(\w{3}\s+\w{3}\s+\d{1,2})/;
                my $pass_down_date = $1
                if (/$tool/){
                        print "$pass_down_date";
                        $print_checker = 1;
                }
                if (/$stop/){
                        $print_checker = 0;
                }
        if ($print_checker){
            print "$_ <br>\n";
        }
                            
 }
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this is the actual code in the loop. $pass_down_date is being matched, it will print outside of any of the if loops. If I try to print it out inside any of the if loops, it comes back with what I believe is an empty string.
by the way, strict and -w are on. :)

Stuffy

I'm going to make some assumptions from things I've read in Programming perl, and in the monastary Please correct me if I'm wrong:

sub meat_and_potatoes_of_program {
    while (<my_file>){
       /(\w{3}\s+\w{3}\s+\d{1,2}/;
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You're not memorizing anything here, because you haven't closed the parentheses. You must actually test code before you post it (unless you're merlyn or tilly or one of the several other clueful hackers among the Monks).

       my $date = $1;
       print "date \n <br>";
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I have also tried:

sub the_meat_and_potatoes_of_program{
my $pass_down_date = 1
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Please be more careful the next time you post a question here. Ensure that your code is exactly the same as that which you claim "doesn't work" (ie. you've tested it and are able to show precisely what the problem is via the errors perl gives you, or the output you're getting and how it differs from what you're expecting), and ideally that your spelling is correct, and that the layout of your post doesn't assault one's visual cortex (thanks to The Damian for that one, and for Text::Autoformat :).

My intention isn't to flame, but rather to provide advice that will help you get the most helpful and accurate replies, and keep the content of The Monastery high.

Ahem, er, am I missing something really simple here?
I wouldn't expect this statement to work:-


if ($foo) {
            print "the date is... $date \n <br>";
         }
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at least not on my Perl version.

Surely, it should be:-


if ($foo) {
            print "The date is...", $date, "\n <br>";
         }
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Never lick a gift horse in the mouth.

Yes, you are missing something really simple here. It's called interpolation and it happens inside double quotes. Put this in a script and run it. $x=1; print 'single quoted dollar x is $x'; print "\n"; print "double quoted dollar x is $x"; print "\n"; perl -e '

• Your Opening the file
• Your Regexp