the problem arises NOT from the fact that you consider yourself a "cgi newbie". your data structure is too flat :) i used a HoH for that. the first hash is "entered" with the name and returns another hash which is "entered" by the state. 
use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;

my $file = "c:\\test.data";
my ($type, $state);
my %data;
my %states;

open (FH, $file) or die "[$file]:[$!]";
while (<FH>) {
    ($type, $state) = split (/\|/, $_);
    if ((defined $type) and (defined $state)) {
        $type =~ s/^\s*//; $type =~ s/\s*$//;
        $state =~ s/^\s*//; $state =~ s/\s*$//;

        $data{$type}->{$state} ++;
        $states{$state} = 1;
    }
}
close (FH);

print qq~<table border="1">\n~;
print_header (\%states);
print_data (\%data, \%states);
print "</table>\n";


############################################################
sub print_data {
############################################################
    my ($data_ref, $states_ref) = @_;
    
    foreach my $type (keys %$data_ref) {
        my $total_for_this_type = 0;

        print "<tr>\n";
        print "\t<td>$type</td>\n";
        foreach my $state (keys %$states_ref) {
            $data_ref->{$type}->{$state} or $data_ref->{$type}->{$stat
+e} = 0;
            print "\t<td>", $data_ref->{$type}->{$state}, "</td>\n";
            $total_for_this_type += $data_ref->{$type}->{$state};
        }
        print "\t<td>$total_for_this_type</td>\n";
        print "</tr>\n";
    }
}

############################################################
sub print_header {
############################################################
    my ($states_ref) = @_;

    print "<tr>\n";
    print "\t<td>MADE</td>\n";
    foreach (keys %$states_ref) {
        print "\t<td>$_</td>\n";
    }
    print "\t<td>TOTAL</td>\n";
    print "</tr>\n";

    print "<tr>\n";
    print "\t<td>====</td>\n";
    foreach (keys %$states_ref) {
        print "\t<td>", "=" x length ($_), "</td>\n";
    }
    print "\t<td>=====</td>\n";
    print "</tr>\n";
}

[download]
this code can surely be improved (the whole print stuff, %states is not beautiful etc). i just wanted to provide a starting point for you. perl scripts like that (first process data, then print it out) "live" from their datastructure.

In reply to Re: Need help , newbie cgi by kabel
in thread Need help , newbie cgi by britney

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.