Why not just re-open STDOUT such as: 

open(STDOUT,">tempfile.html",") or die $!;

[download]
in the case(s) where you need to redirect to a file?

If for some reason you want to preseve STDOUT you can also do the following: 

use FileHandle;

my $fh=new FileHandle;
if ($use_a_file) {
   $fh=open(">tempfile.html","w") or die !:
} else {
    $fh->fdopen(STDOUT,"w");
}


print $fh "blahblahblahblah\n";

[download]

One last thought of a cautionary nature, make sure your CGI environment has permissions to open a file for writing in the directory you are attempting to do so.

I'm sure there are more ways of doing this...

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter at Berghold dot Net
   Dog trainer, dog agility exhibitor, brewer of fine Belgian style ales. Happiness is a warm, tired, contented dog curled up at your side and a good Belgian ale in your chalice.

In reply to Re: Redirection of output by blue_cowdawg
in thread Redirection of output by michellem

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.