Okay, I just wrote a quick little test script that should work as far as I can tell. I copied the functions exactly as they were in the original script, restored my index file, and then ran the script. The result, a blank backup.html file. What gives?

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

my $index = '../index.php';                            # the main page
+ to be edited
my $index_backup = '../edit/backup.html';                # the main pa
+ge backup
my $url = 'http://www.mywebsite.com/edit/backup.html';


&back_up_file ($index, $index_backup);
&redirect ($url);


# makes an exact copy of the current index file - security incase some
+thing
# were to go wrong when adding the news entry
sub back_up_file {

my ($index, $index_backup) = @_;    

    # open the necessary files needed for reading and writing
    open (INDEX, "<$index") or die &show_error ("Unable to open $index
+: $!");
    open(BACKUP, ">$index_backup") or die &show_error ("Unable to open
+ $index_backup: $!");

    # write the existing file into the backup
    while (<INDEX>) {
    print BACKUP "$_";
    }

    # close the files
    close (INDEX);
    close (BACKUP);
}

# redirects the user to the updated index page - or wherever specified
sub redirect {

use CGI qw(:cgi);

my $url = $_[0];
my $q = CGI->new();

  print $q->redirect(
                   -url    => $url
                  );

}

# shows the error returned inside of the browser - easier debuging
sub show_error {

   print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
   print "This is the error: <h1>$_[0]</h1>";

    exit(0);   

}
[download]