Briefly, your problem is that you are not using use strict. Of course, that is not very helpful by itself ...

I have to assume that you are repeating this section of code several times during the program. The line

if ($in{$name}) { $value = $in{$name} . ", " . $value; }
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tells the script that if the $name already exists in the hash %in that it should concatenate the newly read value onto the existing value. However, after you have been through this section of code once, $in{NAME} has a value in it from the previous pass. If %in had been localized to the block with a my, then the previous use of %in would have disappeared when that block of code went out of context.

Now, this makes some presumptions regarding your code, such as that there is a contextual block of code around which the loop occurs. If there isn't, there probably should be.

By the way, it looks as if you are parsing a file that saved responses from a CGI request. If this is the case, you may want to spend some time with the CGI module, which has effective, safe, and easy methods by which to do this. Using it effectively, you may even find a way to save the CGI output in a file that will require a minimum of processing when you read it back in.

-HZ