I see your question has already been answered thoroughly by the other fine monks, but I thought I might point out something that wasn't in your question. I notice you're doing a fair amount of directly printing HTML. You've probably heard this a thousand times, but this kind of thing should really be avoided. HTML::Template is my templating tool of choice, and I suggest you check it out. If you don't want the inconvenience of keeping a separate template file (though some may argue embedding the template directly in the Perl code is even less convenient), you can very easily put the text of the template in __DATA__ at the end of the script.

Here's a quick (and very untested) snippet showing how one might do such a thing:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use HTML::Template;

my $var1 = 'foo';
my $var2 = 'bar';

my $template = HTML::Template->new(filehandle => *DATA);
$template->param(var1 => $var1);
$template->param(var2 => $var2);

print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n", $template->output;

__DATA__
<html>

<head>
  <title>Test HTML::Template!</title>
</head>

<body>

<p>Var1 is set to <!-- TMPL_VAR NAME="var1" --><br/>
Var2 is set to <!-- TMPL_VAR NAME="var2" --></p>

</body>

</html>

[download]

In reply to Re: checking for valid http links by revdiablo
in thread checking for valid http links by swkronenfeld

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.