use strict; # Set the button to green initially my $button = "perlgreenblink"; # test the file line by line. # The line gets read into $_ # I am testing on the DATA segment to illustrate the point while (){ # test with a regex and end the # while loop if there is a problem if (/DOWN/){ $button = "perlredblink2"; last; } if (/PROBLEM/){ $button = "perlyellowblink"; last; } } print "HTML for \n"; __DATA__ nothing here going smoothly Its all going DOWN no PROBLEM at all