Because strings are true. You're checking to see if $key is 'ID', or if 'TITLE' is true, or if 'GENE' is true, etc. string constants are always true.

I think you're trying to see if $key is one of those strings. In that case, you could use:

if ( grep { $key eq $_ } qw(ID TITLE GENE CYTOBAND LOCUSLINK CHROMOSOM
+E SCOUNT) ) {
  # do your stuff
}
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... which will check to see if $key matches at least one of those.

[ ar0n ]