I think your problem might be with what HTML you are returning to the browser. But I am not very sure, since you logic was unclear to me. I had to rewrite some of this for my own sanity, so I hope you forgive me. This script will produce the frameset and each frame. All you need is this script and the coord.dat in the same directory. It uses the 'PATH_INFO' varaible for figuring out which page to print. 
#!/acclib/perl5/bin/perl

my $path = $ENV{'PATH_INFO'};
my $file = 'coord.dat';      # Name the file

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

#if no path print the frameset
if( $path !~ /\S/ )
{
    print_frameset();
}

#if script called with "/entry" appended then print the
#left frame and parse the posted data
elsif( $path =~ /entry/ )
{
    parse_form();
    print_entry();
}

#if script called with "/coord" appended then print the
#right frame
elsif( $path =~ /coord/ )
{
    print_coord();
}
exit;

sub parse_form {

    $buffer = 0;
    read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
    @pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);

    # needed to convert from HTML receive

    foreach $pair (@pairs) {
        ($name, $value) = split(/=/,$pair);
        $value =~ tr/+/ /;
        $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C",hex($1))/eg;
        $FORM{$name} = $value;
    }
    
    #print data to file only if both fields were populated
    if( $FORM{'source'} =~ /\S/ && $FORM{'dest'} =~ /\S/ )
    {
        open(FILE, ">>$file" ) || die;   # Open the file for writing (
+append)
        print FILE "$FORM{source} - $FORM{dest}\n";
        close FILE;
    }
}

sub print_frameset {
    print "<html>\n <head>\n";
    print "<title>Match Results Thus Far</title>\n</head>\n";
    print "<FRAMESET COLS=\"500,*\">\n";
    print "<FRAME SRC=\"$ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}/entry\" NAME=\"left\" NORE
+SIZE>\n";
    print "<FRAME SRC=\"$ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}/coord\" NAME=\"right\" NOR
+ESIZE>\n";
    print "</FRAMESET>\n";
    print "<body>\n";
    print "<hr size=5 width=90%>\n";
    print "<ul>\n";
    print "\n$buffer\n";
    print "<p>Script written by Neil Gaffin\n";
    print "</body> </html>\n";
}

sub print_coord {
    print "<html>\n <head>\n";
    print "<title>Match Results Thus Far</title>\n"; 
    print "<META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\" 
                 CONTENT=\"5\" 
                 URL=\"$ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}/coord\" 
                 TARGET=\"right\">\n</head>\n"; 
    print "<body>\n<h5>\n";
    $lc = 0;
    open FILE, "$file";
    my @lines = <FILE>;
    close FILE;
    while (@lines) {
        $lc += 1;
        print "<center> $lc -- $lines[0] </center>\n";
      shift (@lines);
    }
    print "</h5>\n";
    print "</body> </html>\n";
}

sub print_entry {
    print "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN\">\n";
    print "<html>\n <head>\n";
    print "<title>Neil's Script - Search Engine</title>\n</head>\n";
    print "<body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#000000> <center>\n";
    print "<h2>Move Database Page - File I/O</h2>\n </center>\n";
    print "Use the form below to enter moves<br> \n";
    print "Enter moves in format:<p>\n";
    print "Source Space: Row,Col<br>\n";
    print "Dest Space: Row,Col<p>\n";
    print "Example: A8, H1, C5, G3<br>\n";
    print "(Row must be A-H, Col must be 1-8<p>\n";
    print "<hr size=7 width=90%><p>\n";
    print "<FORM Action=\"$ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}/entry\" 
                METHOD=\"POST\" target = \"left\" >\n";
    print "<center><table border>\n <tr>";
    print "<td>Source Space: </td><td>
           <input type=text name=\"source\" size=4><br></td>\n </tr><t
+r>\n";
    print "<td>Destination Space: </td><td>
          <input type=text name=\"dest\" size=4><br></td>\n </tr><tr>\
+n";
    print "<th colspan=2><input type=submit value=\"Done!\">
           <input type=reset><br></th>\n";
    print "</tr></table></center></form>\n";
    print "<hr size=7 width=90%><p>\n </body></html>\n";
}

[download]
This code does not stack up the frames like yours does. Just save it as your fram.cgi and call it from you web browser. It worked for me. The path_info routing I found extremely useful when generating frames form a perl script, and I found it in the CGI.pm manual. You should probably upgrade this to use CGI.pm, it is much easier.

Well I hope I have helped somewhat.

In reply to Re: Big mess (.cgi/ HTML frames question) by perlmonkey
in thread a big mess... (.cgi / frames question) by Konda

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