Joining with a basic question

[Andrew F.]

Hello all. My name is Andrew.

    I might as well get right to it. I'm writing a real basic script, since I'm still 
learning Perl. It looks like this:


print "Input a name: ";                      #Prompt for a name
sleep .5;
$name1 = <STDIN>;                            #User input

print "\nInput another name:";               #Second prompt
sleep .5;
$name2 = <STDIN>;                            #Second input

if ($name1 eq $name2) {;                     #Compares two variables and returns
    print "\nThese are the same.";           # whether or not they are similar
    }
  else {;
    print "\nThere are not the same.";
    };

The problem is, when I run this, it asks for the input before it prints the visible 
prompt. In other words, it treats it as if it were ordered:

$name1 = <STDIN>;                            #User input
$name2 = <STDIN>;                            #Second input
print "Input a name: ";                      #Prompt for a name
sleep .5;
print "\nInput another name:";               #Second prompt
sleep .5;

Does anyone know why it does this or how to prevent it?

Thanks, 
    Andrew