Solved : answer can be found here : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24673182/perl-overload-file-name-download I had an error in my regexp but since the download was OK, i never suspected the regexp to mess it all :/ -- Hi monkers, I need to be able to propose files to ba downloaded but i have to read and print the file in my CGI. I tried to go for :

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

push( @INC, $lib_directory );
require 'lib_utils.pl';

dl_file('/tmp/final.pdf');
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as main page (dl.pl) and

sub dl_file {
    my ($file) = @_;
    
    if ( ! -e $file) {
        print "file does not exist";
        return 0;
    }

    my $content = read_file( $file, binmode => ':utf8' ) ;
    
    $file =~ m#(.*)([^/]*)$#;
    my $directory    = $1;
    my $filename    = $2;
`echo $directory$filename >> /tmp/flag2`; 

    chdir $directory;    
    
    my $form = new CGI;
    print $form->header(
        -type        => 'application/octet-stream',
        -attachment    => $filename,
        -filename    => $filename,
        -Content-Disposition    => "attachment; filename=$filename",
    );

    $form->print($content);
    
    return 1;
}
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for the called function Funny thing is, this code workes just fine if i dont go for a sub and have all the code in dl.pl BUT as soon as i move the code in a sub, the downloaded file is called after the script (ie dl.pl) How would you change it or how would you do ? Thanks in advance for your help