My first post here, so please be gentle. I have a very basic CGI script (and I have stripped it out here even more just to illustrate the problem). The problem is thus -- the first time I load the web page (that is, no form is submitted), "template," the first field in the form, automatically gets the value "minscale". If I actually enter something in the "template" and "minscale" fields, the entered values are correctly passed and reflected back in the preformatted output at the bottom of the page. Its just that first time... it seems the hash definition at the top is causing the problem... the "template" key is getting nothing from param('template') and is using the name of the next key as its value. Any advice will be much appreciated. Code follows 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use CGI::Pretty qw(:standard);
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

my %webobj = (       
                'template' => param('template'), 
                'minscale' => param('minscale')
            );
                            
print header, start_html;
print<<WEBOBJ;
<form method='get' action='webobj.cgi'>
<b>Web Object</b>
<table border='0'>
    <tr>
        <td align='right'>Template</td>
        <td><input type='text' name='template' value="$webobj{'templat
+e'}"></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td align='right'>Minscale</td>
        <td><input type='text' name='minscale' value="$webobj{'minscal
+e'}"></td>
    </tr>
    <tr><td></td><td colspan='2'><input type='Submit' value='submit'> 
+<input type='reset'></td></tr>
</table>
</form>

<pre>
#
## start web object
WEB
  TEMPLATE "$webobj{'template'}"
  MINSCALE $webobj{'minscale'}
END
# end web object
#
</pre>
WEBOBJ

print end_html;

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In reply to Puzzling CGI behavior by punkish

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