I wrote this small perl code to count the visitors in my web page, I have placed it in Apache directory`s cgi-bin folder, but everything (SSI commands, XTML) is working except the perl part, it doesn`t even show up, for perl section "an error occured while processing this directive" appears, could you check the below code and tell me where I went wrong? 
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Program to track the number of times
# a Web page has been accessed.

use CGI qw( :standard );

open( COUNTREAD, "counter.dat" );
$data = <COUNTREAD>;
$data++;
close( COUNTREAD );

open( COUNTWRITE, ">counter.dat" );
print( COUNTWRITE $data );
close( COUNTWRITE );

print( header(), "<div style = \"text-align: center;
                                font-weight: bold\">" );
print( "You are visitor number", br() );

for ( $count = 0; $count < length( $data ); $count++ ) {
   $number = substr( $data, $count, 1 );
   print( { $number }, "\n" );
}

[download]
I appreciate it...

In reply to Perl counter in cgi-bin by edeita2

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.