damian has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

i have an html file saved as a text file... let's say header.txt which cotains just plain html headers <head> and <body>. now i have a script that opens this file with this code. 
open(H, "header.txt");
@header = H;
close @header;

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then i print the header out 
print @header;

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but instead of displaying the html header i recieved this annoying error message:
#-----------
In string, @forminputs now must be written as \@forminputs at ./login.cgi line 235, near "});
#separate the different form-inputs
@forminputs"
#---------- now i don't know what's wrong with that??? help me on this guys..... thanks in advance.

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Re: @forminputs annoying error
by GridMonk (Acolyte) on May 09, 2000 at 11:01 UTC
    I get this kind of error when I forget to escape an '@'
    in quotes (like $email = "me@mydomain.com"; )

    The error does not occur when I escape the ampersand,
    as in $email = "me\@mydomain.com";

    Do you have an ampersand in quotes anywhere in your code?

    Not sure if that is your problem or not, but...

    A monk asked his teacher,
    "What did old Masters attain when they entered the ultimate stage?"
    "They were like burglars sneaking into a vacant house," the teacher replied.

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        Try using no quotes around the HTML.
        Just print << HTML;

        .... ?

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Re: @forminputs annoying error
by BBQ (Curate) on May 09, 2000 at 07:34 UTC
    You mean apart from that @header is not equal to @forminputs?
    Check and see where are you defining @forminputs...

    It would help if you posted a bit of your original code, maybe from lines 230 through 240...

    #!/home/bbq/bin/perl
    # Trust no1!
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      thanks but i think i found my mistake.... i have this line... print<<"EOT"; .... couple of html codes here .... EOT; -> this is the error it should be EOT only. but it does'nt make sense, PERL display's an error which is somehow not related to the real error. thanks anyway
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        Beleive me when I say that it probably makes sense. 99% of the times that I catch myself saying things like "Stupid machine, its not supposed to!", I'll be biting my tongue later on with a big Homer Simpson "DOH!". Perl isn't tricky, its just flexible. Once you get past that stage then you'll be laughing at your own mistakes and making a habit of runnin -c.

        In the meanwhile... Each person has his/her own method of defining HTML, but I like doing the following:
        my $variables = '1 2 3';
my @arrays = (4, 5, 6);
my $html = qq{
<html>
<head>
<!-- your head stuff -->
</head>
<body etc, et al>
More stuff with <font face="Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif">$variables and
+ @arrays</font>
and things of the sort.
</body>
</html>
};

print $html;

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        I rarely use { or } characters in my HTML, and even if I do, they are usually in Javascript or CSS which get imported as .js or .css files, so I never have to worry about literalizing(?) any special characters. I hope that helps as a future suggestion.

        #!/home/bbq/bin/perl
        # Trust no1!
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        Sometimes that extra semicolon can really mess you up...

        You must have had another EOT somewhere in the file, because it should have given you one of these: Can't find string terminator "EOT" anywhere before EOF at ... So between the first terminating EOT and the second terminating EOT you had the @forminputs variable and perl thought you wanted to print the variable name along with all the other code in between.

        That's why it's helpful to give your here-document labels different names each time, like: 

        print <<EOT1;

EOT1

print << EOT2;

EOT2

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        That way if you accidentally put a semicolon on the end of one you'll immediately know where to look because you'll get the error above instead of some other crazy errors.
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Re: @forminputs annoying error
by Novician (Novice) on May 09, 2000 at 12:12 UTC
    GridMonk is most prob right.
    u need to have an escape key such as "\" for the char @ 

    The char "[" and "]" too needs to have an escape key in the front <br>

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    As a html format, @ is okay.
    but when it comes to perl, it will think that you are refering
    to an array, because of the @ char.

    Put a "\" in front of every @ char and all should be fine :)
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RE: @forminputs annoying error
by Anonymous Monk on May 09, 2000 at 16:28 UTC
    If you open "H" should you not be closing "H" rather than "@headers"?
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Re: @forminputs annoying error
by raflach (Pilgrim) on May 09, 2000 at 21:26 UTC
    You can use <code> command to make your code show up properly... currently it looks like you are saying:
    @header=H;

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    instead of:
    @header=<H>;

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    This shouldn't even begin to work, at least as I understand perl.
    You are also as noted above, never closing the H filehandle.
    This won't really cause you any problems normally, but closing @header doesn't make any sense at all.
    Of course I could be totally misinterpreting what you're trying to do.
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