Ouch. There are many things here you need to look at, but to get you going:

• it's   with a semi-colon
• your ssi check only removes includes - what about the other ssi calls? use generic instead
• use CGI and strict
• know when to use an array and when to use a scalar
• sub &main is not needed

Here is a quick rewrite (untested) of the above code. Please ask if there's anything you don't understand.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;

my $basedir = "/data1/blah.net/blah/";

my $baseurl = "http://blah.blah.net";

my $q=CGI::new();

my $tpass       = $q->param('password');
my $article     = $q->param('text');
my $destination = $q->param('destination');

# set $file to location of txt file
my $file="$basedir$destination\.txt";

# strip out all possible SSI calls here, not below (ie, remove all com
+ments)
$article =~ s/<!--.*?-->//gis;

# make sure destination is within parameters (allow underscores as wel
+l
if ($destination !~ /^\w+$/){
    &filename;
}

# ?? only overwrite existing file? If so use -T instead
# if(-e $file)

if(-T $file) {
    open(WRITE, ">$file") || &filename;
    print WRITE "$line\n";
    close(WRITE);
}
else {
    &filename;
}

sub filename{
    print $q->header,
          $q->start_html,
          $q->h4("Error: You can't write to that file!"),
          $q->end_html;
    exit(0);
}

######################################################################
+#

#!/usr/local/bin/perl-w
use strict;
use CGI;

my $q = CGI::new();

my $basedir = "/data1/blah.net/blahs/";
my $baseurl = "http://blah.blah.net";

my $article   = $q->param('article');
my $page      = $q->param('page');
my $maxlength = 43;
my $next      = $page+1;
my $previous  = $page-1;
my $start     = ($page-1)*$maxlength;
my $finish    = $page*$maxlength;

my $file="$basedir$article\.txt";

open(TOP, "$basedir/top\.htm")|| &filename;
my $top= join '',(<TOP>);
close(TOP);

open(BOTTOM, "$basedir/bottom\.htm")|| &filename;
my $bottom = join '', (<BOTTOM>);
close(BOTTOM);

open(READ, "$file")|| &filename;
my @info = (<READ>);
close(READ);

$length=@info;

$top =~ s|</head>|<base href="http://blah.blah.net"></head>|is;

print $q->header,
      $top;

print $q->header,
      $q->start_html,
      $info[$start..$finish];

# note, this -> $info[$start..$finish]; may not work - it's late and s
+eemed like a good idea :)

if ( ($length>$finish) && ($page>1) ) {
    print $q->p("&nbsp;&nbsp;",
                $q->font({-color=>'yellow'},
                         '<--&nbsp;'
                ),
                $q->a({-href => "http://blah.blah.net/cgi-bin/article.
+cgi?article=$article&page=$previous"},
                       'Go to the previous page'
                ),
                $q->a({-href => "http://blah.blah.net/cgi-bin/article.
+cgi?article=$article&page=$next"},
                       'Continue to the next page'
                ),
                $q->font({-color=>'yellow'},
                         '&nbsp;-->'
                )
          );

} elsif ( ($length>$finish) && ($page==1) ) {
    print $q->p({-align => 'right'},
                $q->a({-href => "http://blah.blah.net/cgi-bin/article.
+cgi?article=$article&page=$next"},
                      'Continue to the next page'
                ),
                $q->font({-color=>'yellow'},
                         '&nbsp-->'
                )
          );
}

print $bottom, $q->end_html;
exit(0);

sub filename{

    print $q->header,
          $q->start_html( -title => 'Article does not exist'),
          $q->p('Sorry, That article does not exist),
          $q->end_html;
    exit(0);
}
[download]

This is by no means how I would write this, but I hope you will take the time to look up the CGI docs and use it in future. It's a lot better than trusting your own sub!

This should keep you going for now...

As to your characters per line issue, you don't state whether paragraph breaks are needed. Here's a hint anyway for the first script:

$article =~ s/\s+/ /gs;
$article =~ s|([^\n]\b{0,100})|$1<br/>|gs;
[download]

hth

cLive ;-)

--
seek(JOB,$$LA,0);

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