Definitely look into CGI as ColtsFoot suggests. It will make your life so much easier (after you learn the basics, which shouldn't take too long). Here's a revised start to your script, which uses CGI.pm to get the query string (much, much easier and more robust): 
#!/usr/bin/perl -wT

use strict;
use CGI;

my $page = new CGI;
my $in = $page->param('alpha');

[download]
And so forth. I'm not sure what you intend to do with the form or the alpha subroutine. Perhaps you could reply and shed more light on it.

In reply to Re: Basic CGI Question (Moved from Q&A) by chromatic
in thread Basic CGI Question (Moved from Q&A) by Russ

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