1. This is as documented. For an uploaded file both param and upload return something that can be used as a filehandle. The difference is that someone trying to be mean to you can send "/etc/passwd" as a string, if you make the mistake of trusting param*( you may wind up displaying your own password file. But upload() will not fall for this.
2. If you take the return from param() and use it as a string you will get the name of the file on the remote system. However the file has actually been spooled to a local temp file, and you are free to open a new file named whatever you want, read from the uploaded filehandle, and print to the new file. On 5.6.0 you should be able to do it something like this (untested):

   my $in = $q->upload('uploaded_file');
   my $save_as = "demo.txt";
   open(my $out, "> $save_as") or die "Cannot write to '$save_as': $!";
   print $out <$in>;
   close($out);
   [download]

   Previous to 5.6.0 you couldn't use a scalar there, and would need to use Symbol and gensym a symbol for use.

When you upload a file CGI.pm creates a temporary file to store the contets of the upload. CGI.pm introduced the upload() method in version 2.47. Before this you could use the value returned by param('upload_file') as the file handle in order to read from the file. I have had problems with the upload() method in versions of CGI.pm up to and including 2.75 so usually kludge around it and do it the old way if necessary.

Anyway once you have your file handle you read from the temporary file and write it somewhere new so I don't understand what you mean in the second bit. A quick and dirty solution would just be to use Perl's rename($old, $new) function if everything works currently to get the final filename you want.

cheers

tachyon

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Hrm, if you want to improve your chances of getting help, you might want to try to learn how to post readable code here.

Note that you can use html tags like paragraph and code to improve the readability of your code. Right now, trying to read your post gives me a headache :) Check out Writeup Formatting tips

Good luck on finding the answer to your question, and note that if you had become a member, you would have been able to edit your original node, rather than writing a new one. It's not like it'll cost you anything =)

qw[marcus</code>]</code>