Let's make this a little nicer: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;    # you're safer with this
use CGI;
my $query = new CGI;

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

my $name = $query->param('name');
my $file;

{    # let's be safe here with filehandles, too
    local *FILE;
    open (FILE, $name) || error("Can't find $name: $!");
    my $first_line = <FILE>;
    chomp ($file = <FILE>);        # takshaka gets bonus points for ac
+tually testing it
    close FILE;
}

if ($file eq $query->param('pass')){    # more logically phrased

    print qq[<HTML>
        <frameset cols="100%,290%">
        <frame src="commands.cgi?name=$name];
      print qq[" name="commands">
          <frame src="base.cgi?name=$name];
      print qq[" name="game">
          </frameset>
      </HTML>];
} else {
    error("Sorry, that was the wrong pass/name, please try again.");
}

sub error {
    my $text = shift;
    print qq[<HTML>$text</HTML>];
    exit;
}

[download]
There, that ought to work better. You did a couple of (syntactially valid, yes) things that could come back to haunt you, so I cleaned them up. First, you read the file in list context, into an array. If you just want the second line of it, we'll throw the first one away into a temporary variable and grab the second in another statement. That'll save reading the whole thing in if it's a potentially large file. (I don't particularly like the temporary variable throwaway thing here, but it's a good way to illustrate the point. @foo1 will give warnings with strict because it ought to be written $foo1 as it returns a scalar, not a list.)

Notice also the chomp statement, to remove the input record separator (\n, a newline) from $file. That'll make things match successfully. Most of the other stuff just makes it work under the strict pragma. There's also a little more error checking. Be sure to do that.

I like to wrap my open calls in blocks so I can use local on the filehandles. It doesn't matter much in small scripts, but as they have a way of growing into larger files, if you already have a filehandle named FILE active somewhere else, you'll clobber it here.

And, yes KM, there ought to be an exit at the end of the error sub, so let's redact that in. :)

In reply to RE: Re: If by chromatic
in thread If doesn't work by MAS4891

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