Could someone tell me what is wrong with these PERL statements

it is always setting the $status2 to the number inside of the brackets......why????????

if (/^Status:/)
{
$stat = $Fld[2];
print "\$stat is $stat\n";
}

the above is where i'm searching for a string inside of a file


if($stat == 'Sent')
{
$status2=2;
}

print "\$status2 is $status2\n";


if($stat == 'Send')
{
$status2=1;
}

print "\$status2 is $status2\n";

Try use eq instead of ==