my $var = `property <dataid>`;
print "<td align="middle">$var</td>";

##</code><code>##

my $var;
open( PROG, "property $dataid |" );
# binmode PROG;  # might need to do this?
{
    local $/;  # set input rec. separator to undef
    $var = <PROG>;  # slurp output from property
}
close PROG;

$var =~ s/</&lt;/g; # make sure browsers don't see XML tags as tags

# if there is binary data, there's more you'll need to do
# to make it presentable to a browser...