I think I am just being an idiot, but this is driving me nuts,

in perl, I am trying to create a menu for a program I am writing

here is the code

while($stats ne "done" || $stats ne "none" || $stats ne "all")
{
if($stats =~ /^owner$/)
{
#do some stuff
}
elsif
{
#do some other stuff
}
#bla
#bla
#bla
else
{
print "not a valid option\n";
}
$stats = <STDIN>;
}

Where it says bla - there is another nested if loop.

If I enter none, done, or all - shouldn't the program skip the loop?
because it always gives the error message "not a valid option"

Thanks for any help

eagle

Logical error: you're not saying what you mean.

This line:
should be this:

Also, you haven't said how you're getting $stats. If you're reading it from a filehandle, make sure you chomp() it, otherwise you'll find newlines at the end of your string that can cause your matches to fail.

You might also look into the Term::Prompt and Term::Menus modules on CPAN.