Here is the bare bones of what you need to do. You need to escape HTML special. If you want to use something other than <pre> tags you also need to change multiple spaces and tabs into &nbsp; and replace \n with <br>

In this example we wrap the result in <pre> tags to get a fixed width font accurate display of the original text. Tabs are rendered as 4 spaces.

Update

The escapeHTML method this example did use is documented as an internal CGI.pm method so I have re-coded it here as it is naughty to use internal methods. I have also added the PerlMonks square bracket escape. It does not hurt anything. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my $text = "c:/text.pl";

open TEXT, $text or die "Oops can't open $text $!";
open HTML, ">$text.htm" or die "Oops can't write $text.htm $!";
print HTML "<pre>\n";
while (<TEXT>) {
    $_ = escapeHTML($_);
    print HTML $_;
}
print HTML "</pre>\n";
close HTML;
close TEXT;

sub escapeHTML {
    local $_ = shift;
    # make the required escapes
    s/&/&amp/g;
    s/"/&quot;/g;
    s/</&lt;/g;
    s/>/&gt;/g;
    # make the whitespace escapes - not required within pre tags
    s/\t/&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/g;
    s/( {2,})/"&nbsp;" x length $1/eg;
    # make the brower bugfix escapes;
    s/\x8b/&#139;/g;
    s/\x9b/&#155;/g;
    # make the PERL MONKS escapes (if desired)
    s/\[/&#091;/g;
    s/\]/&#093;/g;
    # change newlines to <br> if desired
    # s/\n/<br>/g;
  return $_;
}

[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

In reply to Re: Formatting a text file for browser by tachyon
in thread Formatting a text file for browser by blacksmith

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.