Hi MrTEE

You're masking the values of $f5 and $f7 by declaring them with "my" a second time. You also need to delay the creation of your $xout string until after all your variables are properly set. Try something like:

my ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6, $f7) = ("") x 7;
#$f3="C";
if ( not defined $f3 or $f3 eq '' ) {
    $f5 = "N";
    $f7 = "G";
    print "the 7th and 8th blocks should have values \n";
}
my $xout = "system|$f2|$f3|$f4|$f5|$f6|$f7|\n";
print $xout;
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