Howdy all you high priests! Anyway, I have been working on a simple CGI perl script so i can leanr how to code - wow, what deep meditation it requires! So, I want to trap anything less than 1 and more than 6000555. At the same time, I also do not want any special characters. So, any number from 1 to the 6000555 is great. So, for the user to see the errors of his ways, it must be printed. So, here are my two problems: 1. How do I get it to go to a frame called "stuff" in a framed website? 2. Here is my code (I know what you all are thinking, but I am a newlie and this is my first attempt). The input is called $patent. What was happening at first is that it would print the error message, but over and over and over. Then I made some changes and now it just spins off into space and the page never loads, just acts like it will. By the way, if I enter a correct nymber, it all works great and the html code at the end prints what I want. 
$patent =$value;


while (1) { 
# checking for any non-numeric characters
   unless ($patent =~ /^[\d]+$/){ 

print <<ENDERRORCARD;
      <HTML>
    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>Data Entry Error</TITLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#0000EE" VLINK="#551A
+8B"
    ALINK="#FF0000">
    <CENTER>
    You either entered a patent number with special characters.<BR>
    Use your browser's BACK option to try again.
    </CENTER><P>
    </BODY>
       </HTML>

ENDERRORCARD
 
      next;
} 
   last if 1 <= $patent and $patent <= 6009555;

print <<ENDERRCARD;
      <HTML>
    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>Data Entry Error</TITLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#0000EE" VLINK="#551A
+8B"
    ALINK="#FF0000">
    <CENTER>
    You entered a patent number that was not between 1 and 6,009,555.<
+P>
    Use your browser's BACK option to try again.
    </CENTER><P>
    </BODY>
       </HTML>

ENDERRCARD
}



# This compares the patent number of the user against US patent number
+ dates

[download]

In reply to HTML error routine by Anonymous Monk

Title:
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