gzip complains of broken pipe with Perl

[rkhosla]

Hello,
I am trying to parse .gz files to get some statistics - the list of those files are in the array @ribFilesList. I have a Perl script running on Gentoo Linux.
Here is my code:

rib_loop: foreach my $ribFile (@ribFilesList) 
  {
      if (!open(RIBFILE, "gzip -dc $ribFile |")) {
      &logError($progname, "Unable to open ribfile $ribFile: $!");
      exit $error;
      }    
      while(defined(my $line = <RIBFILE>))   
      {    
      chomp($line);
      my ($peer,$prefix) = (split(/\|/,$line,7))[3,5];  
      if($prefix eq $prefix_unique_hash)
      {
          #The prefix exists in this rib file
          $counter_file=$counter_file+1;  
          close(RIBFILE);
          next rib_loop;
      }  
      }
      close(RIBFILE);
 

The open doesnt give an error so the code doesnt exit, however sometimes I get the error: "gzip: stdout: Broken pipe", do you know why this happens? I try to close the RIBFILE before going to another iteration of the loop to avoid this but it still persists. Any ideas why?
Thanks!

[KevinADC]

close(RIBFILE) or die "Can't close RIBFILE: $!";

see if that helps anything.