use CGI; my $query = new CGI; my $url = $query->param('url'); my $name = $query->param('name'); $url = "http://" . $url if $url && $url !~ m#^http://#i; open FILE, ">foo" or die "Can't open foo: $!"; print FILE $url ? "$name" : $name; close FILE or die "Can't close foo: $!";