my @fields = ("to", "from", "subject", "message");

my @field_names;
@field_names = ("To", "From", "Subject", "Message");


my $page_title = "Mailto";
[download]

<tr>
                <td>From:</td>
                <td><select name="$fields[1]" size="1">
                more code...
            </select></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Subject:</td>
                <td><input type="text" name="$fields[2]" size="24"></t
+d>
            </tr>
                <tr>
                <td>Message:</td>
                <td><textarea name="$fields[3]" cols="40" rows="4"></t
+extarea></td>
            </tr>
                <tr>
                <td>Send it!:</td>
                <td><INPUT TYPE="submit" NAME="action" VALUE="Send"></
+td>
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Remove the my declaration from your config file.

Declare your arrays with our in your program:


our @fields;
out @field_names;
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Then require your config file:


require 'config_mailto.txt';
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That should work.

Have a look at perldoc -f our and perldoc -f my for more info.

There are a lot of people still using version 5.005_03, in which case the our solution is simply not an option. But even if you do have 5.6.x installed, I still am not convinced that it is a good idea. See Why is 'our' good? for some of my doubts.

Hi,
I have a similar setup and the way I work is fully qualifing the variable using the package name. This will prevent strict from complaining. For Example: The config_mail file

Package MailConfig;
use strict;
@MailConfig::fields=qw /to from subject message/;
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etc... And in your actual program, do:

use strict;
require "config_mail.pl";

...your print code...
<tr>
<td>From:</td>
<td><select name='$MailConfig::fields[1]" size="1">
more code...
            </select></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Subject:</td>
<td><input type="text" name="$MailConfig::fields[2]" size="24"></t
+d>
[download]

This is the most readable solution, as you know where to look for when you want to change a variable.
Dr. Mark Ceulemans

Senior Consultant

IT Masters, Belgium

Glancing at your print code strongly suggests to me that you have a lot to learn about separation of presentation and content.

A good first link I would therefore recommend is the following paper on how to use the template toolkit in building web sites.

How about this setup which I think is clean way to do it.

Content of the config file, say cfg.cfg

%cfg = (To => 'to',
        From => 'from',
        Subject => 'subject',
        Message => "message\nmsg2\n",
        Page_Title => 'MailTo');

%cfg;
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Then you do something like this in the main program.

use strict;
.
.
my $file = 'cfg.cfg';
my %cfg;
my $return = do $file;
unless ($return) {
    die "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
    die "couldn't do $file: $!"    unless defined $return;
    die "couldn't run $file"       unless $return;
}

%cfg =  %{$return};
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And then later in your code use it as

                <td><select name="$cfg{From}" size="1">
                more code...
            </select></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Subject:</td>
                <td><input type="text" name="$cfg{Subject}" size="24">
+</t
[download]

This is easily expanded to have several different configs in the same file.
Ex $cfg{Guest}{To}, $cfg{Admin}{Page_Title}, etc etc