print $q->header;
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to something like this:

print $q->header(-type=>'text/plain');
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(If you are using the function-oriented interface to CGI it's the same, of course, just omitting the $q->.)

(As always the CGI.pm docs are your friend.)

PRE tags will have the browser follow the 'typewritten' format of the text. To adjust format, you might look at Text::Wrap.

Update: Tilly's suggestion of Text::Autoformat sounds good. I've never used it but I expect he knows what he's talking about ;-)

After Compline,
Zaxo

Text::Autoformat does a better job. :-)

Have your CGI script return a content type of "text/plain". You don't need to do any formatting whatsoever.

Code is as follows:

  print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
 
  # print text file here
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Or if you're using CGI.pm...

  my $q = CGI->new();

  # handle any CGI parameters, set other headers, etc.

  print $q->header( { -type=>'text/plain' } );

  # print text file here
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You want text to display in the browser just like it would display in notepad? Wrap your ascii file in <pre> tags, and you'll be set... almost too easy :)

Actually no. You will need to escape all the HTML special characters for them to display. Here is an example. The text is "Wrap your ascii file in <pre> tags, and you'll be set... almost too easy :)"

"Wrap your ascii file in 
 tags, and you'll be set... almost too easy :)"
Hmmm, not actually the text I wanted. I'll close that unmatched pre now 

CGI.pm has an escapeHTML method to do this $html = $q->escapeHTML($text) As a browser will only render 1 space even if you have 10 in a row or tabs you need to escape these to. I have posted a solution in this thread - see below.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

Here is the bare bones of what you need to do. You need to escape HTML special. If you want to use something other than <pre> tags you also need to change multiple spaces and tabs into &nbsp; and replace \n with <br>

In this example we wrap the result in <pre> tags to get a fixed width font accurate display of the original text. Tabs are rendered as 4 spaces.

Update

The escapeHTML method this example did use is documented as an internal CGI.pm method so I have re-coded it here as it is naughty to use internal methods. I have also added the PerlMonks square bracket escape. It does not hurt anything.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my $text = "c:/text.pl";

open TEXT, $text or die "Oops can't open $text $!";
open HTML, ">$text.htm" or die "Oops can't write $text.htm $!";
print HTML "<pre>\n";
while (<TEXT>) {
    $_ = escapeHTML($_);
    print HTML $_;
}
print HTML "</pre>\n";
close HTML;
close TEXT;

sub escapeHTML {
    local $_ = shift;
    # make the required escapes
    s/&/&amp/g;
    s/"/&quot;/g;
    s/</&lt;/g;
    s/>/&gt;/g;
    # make the whitespace escapes - not required within pre tags
    s/\t/&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/g;
    s/( {2,})/"&nbsp;" x length $1/eg;
    # make the brower bugfix escapes;
    s/\x8b/&#139;/g;
    s/\x9b/&#155;/g;
    # make the PERL MONKS escapes (if desired)
    s/\[/&#091;/g;
    s/\]/&#093;/g;
    # change newlines to <br> if desired
    # s/\n/<br>/g;
  return $_;
}
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cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

<PRE>
x is less than y: x<y
y is greater than x: y>x
</PRE>
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