This comes up regularly so here is short script to convert a text file into HTML so that it will display correctly in a browser - ie looks like it does in a text editior. The new file has a .htm extension added.

HTML special chars are escaped and tabs rendered as 4 spaces. Sequences of spaces longer that 1 are converted to corresponding number of &nbsp; so that the whitespace formatting is retained (not required if the output is wrapped in <pre> tags - but does not hurt). In the exapmple <pre> tags are wrapped around the escaped output so newlines retain their literal meaning. If you wanted to use other tags (say <tt>) you will need to uncomment the s/\n/<br>\n/g line to complete the escape process.

Yes there are modules out there that will do this. This is what they do in a nutshell for the curious. They probably won't do the [PerlMonks] escapes though :-)

#!/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;
    # change tabs to 4 spaces
    s/\t/    /g;
    # make the whitespace escapes - not required within <pre> tags  
    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 - not required with <pre>
    # s/\n/<br>\n/g;
  return $_;
}

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In reply to Text to HTML by tachyon

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.