Also, use CGI!!!! Try this instead:

use CGI qw(:standard);

my $file  = 'foo.txt';
my $lines = read_file($file);

print header(), start_form(),
   textarea(
      -name     => 'head',
      -value    => $lines,
      -rows     => 6,
      -cols     => 60,
      -wrap     => 'soft',
      -override => 1,
   ), p(submit());

my $head = strip(param('head'));

print end_form();

if ($head) {
   write_file($file,$head);
}

sub read_file {
   my $file = shift;
   open(FILE,$file) or die "$file not readable: $!";
   my @lines = <FILE>;
   close(FILE);
   return join('',@lines);
}

sub write_file {
   my ($file,$new_head) = @_;
   print STDERR "adding $new_head";
   open (FILE,'>',$file) or die "$file not writeable";
   flock (FILE, 2)       or die "$file not lockable";
   print FILE $new_head;
   close(FILE);
}

sub strip {
   my $param = shift;
   return '' unless $param;

   $param =~ s/^\s+//g;
   $param =~ s/\s+$//g;
   return $param;
}
[download]

Of interest is the strip() function which does some basic validation on the text to be written to the file. In this case, if nothing but whitespace or nothing at all is submitted then the file will not be written to.

The read_file subroutine uses the join trick i mentioned earlier. This is just one way to convert an array into a scalar explicitly.

Hope this helps.

P.S. Oh! I really should mention something about the -override option to the textarea() method. CGI.pm by default will use the value that was submitted. Be sure that you specify -override in this situation because you are wanted to show the contents of the file, not what was submitted. Comment that line out and see what i mean.

Also, don't forget to properly set file and directory permissions/ownerships.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
(the triplet paradiddle)