Thanks Ovid for your time spent clarifying this for me.

I understand the faults with my original script, and have corrected them accordingly.

Another problem I had which you could not have known about is that I defined $indx too early in the script since its path is dependent upon $Number

I now have the following script: 
use strict;
use CGI ':standard';
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser warningsToBrowser);
use HTML::Template;



my $db="/path/edit/data.txt";
print header();


    open DB, "< $db" or die "Cannot open ($db) for reading: $!";
while (my $line = <DB>) {
chomp $line;
my ($word,$time,$Number,$Location) = split "\t",$line;
    if ($Number) {
    
    my $indx = "/path/pages/$Number/index.html";     
    open FILE1, "> $indx"  or die "Can't open $indx: $!";
    # open the HTML template
    my $template = HTML::Template->new(filename => $indx_tem);

    # fill in some parameters in the template
    $template->param(Location => $Location);
    $template->param(Number => $Number);
    $template->param(word => $word);

    # print the template to file
    $template->output(print_to => *FILE1);
        
    close FILE1;
    print "finish$Number<br>";       
    }
}
close DB;

print end_html();

[download]
This seems to function well and all my files are now brought up to date when I make a change to the template file.

Thanks once again for your help

In reply to Re: Re: using HTML::Template to update a file by jonnyfolk
in thread using HTML::Template to update a file by jonnyfolk

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.