Gee, it's actually not the worst Perl code I have seen by any stretch of the imagination. A couple of points:
This:
unless ( scalar(@downhosts) == 0 ) {
print p, "There $verbage[2] ", scalar(@downhosts), " $verbage[3]
+unreachable\n", br;
}
rather than:
unless ( scalar(@downhosts) == 0 ) { print p, "There $verbage[2] ", sc
+alar(@downhosts), " $verbage[3] unreachable\n", br }
I see others have pointed out some different approaches to dealing with filehandles and the like. Only other suggestion I would make is to use
CGI more effectively by not printing HTML directly - always use CGI/
And finally, use perltidy. I have it in the toolbox in my Komodo so I can run it over my code any time. It actually mkes it easier to spot problems when I can see thngs like the indentation level go wrong! It also gives me a consistency of style I am too lazy to get any other way.
jdtoronto