I am writing a script for my two little boys to play a game. We
are not going to hack ourself so I am not doing strict etc. I mention
this because previous attempts to get help did not get the question
answered elsewhere,but referred to do strict and warnings. There is a ton more code than what I am going to show you...a re-write to strict would take a long time...not merited for a script for only use on a home system.

Scratch.dat is a dat file with 18 lines...
the_line|country_number

country.dat is also a dat file with 336 lines...
ln|nm|nr|ne|ea|se|so|sw|we|nw|mn|tt

I want to read all 18 lines of scratch.dat and update country.dat
so that if scratch.dat (country_number) is equal to country.dat (ln),
then country.dat (mn) would be changed to the value of scratch.dat
(the_line)...I need help with printing the updated country.dat file
back.

Please help me with this.

# Have 18 rand numbers, now assign creatures to countrys
open (SCR, "scratch.dat") || &CgiDie ("SCRATCH could not be opened while attempting read");
        @scra =<SCR>;
        close (SCR);
        $reps = 1;
        while ($reps < 19)
        {
        foreach $mine (@scra)
            {
            chomp($mine);
            ($the_line, $country_number) = split (/\|/, $mine);
            open (CNT, "+>country.dat") || &CgiDie ("Country list could not be opened trying to position creatures");
            @ymca =<CNT>;
            foreach $thine (@ymca)
                {
                chomp($thine);
                ($ln, $nm, $nr, $ne, $ea, $se, $so, $sw, $we, $nw, $mn, $tt ) = split (/\|/, $thine);
                if ($ln == $country_number)
                    {
                    $mn = $the_line;
                    }
                } # End of for each on country file
            $reps++;
            } # End of for each @scra - scratch
            print CNT;
            close (CNT);
        } # End of while
    #unlink ("scratch.dat");
    &printout;
    }
else
    {
    &signin;
        }