Netscape will only display HTML code if Netscape has been told it's HTML. (Quite surprisingly, Netscape follows the standard - that must have been by accident). You have to tell on the browser what the content-type of the document is, by issueing the correct HTTP header. CGI.pm has functions for that (although you could print them yourself). But that vital piece of code is missing from your code fragment (which only includes code that's totally irrelevant for the question).

Abigail