my $file_name = $2;
open (FILE, "$name") or die "unable to open file";
[download]

What is $name set to? Undef? Something else in your script (global $name?) On top of that I don't think doing a regex is really necessary (or would actually accomplish what you want).

Here's some code to demonstrate:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use CGI qw(:standard);

my $query = new CGI;


print $query->header;
print $query->start_html( -title => "CGI" );


if( $CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS ) {
    print $query->h2( 'Cheezy - uploads disabled in CGI.pm ... try res
+etting' );
    $CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS = 0;
} else {
    print $query->h2( 'Great ... uploads enabled in CGI.pm' );
}


my $file = $query->upload('file');

if( ! $file ) {
    print "No file uploaded.";
} else {

    $file =~ m/^.*(\\|\/)(.*)/;
    my $file_name = $2;

    print $query->h2( 'file_name' ), $file_name;

    print $query->h2( 'File name' ), $file;
    print $query->h2( 'File MIME type' ), $query->uploadInfo( $file )-
+>{'Content-Type' };
    print $query->h2( 'Ref $file' ), ref( $file );

    my $data;
    while( <$file> ) {
        $data .= $_;
        $length += length( $_ );
    }

    print $query->h2( 'Contents' );
    print $query->pre( $data ), $query->p;

    print $query->h2( 'File length' ), $length;
}

print $query->end_html;
[download]

-derby

thanks for all your help derby! I used the code you wrote and once again it didn't print the contents of the file but it did say that uploads were enabled by CGI.pm. Who would of thought printing the contnets of the file would be such a task. ohh well.....