Hi, I am fairly new to perl (but not C) and am trying out some code. In a nutshell, it spits out the old 'Internal Server' error page. To make matters worse, I cannot check my server logs for more information. The code is supposed to be a simple counter, and I am trying some interesting type switching (no 'atoi()' or 'itoa()' functions that I am aware of). If someone could find the error I would be very grateful :) ... 
#!/usr/bin/perl

########################################
## INITIALIZE CGI ######################
########################################

use lib qw(.);
use CGI;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
$cgi = new CGI;

########################################
## MAIN ################################
########################################

$DATAFILE = "hitcount-sendtoevery.txt";

$WEBPAGE_INITIALIZE = "<html><body bgcolor=\"#000000\" text=\"#ffffff\
+" link=\"#ffffff\" vlink=\"#ffffff\" alink=\"#ffffff\"><font face=\"A
+rial\" color=\"#000000\"><center><table border=\"0\" width=\"400\" ce
+llspacing=\"20\" cellpadding=\"20\"><tr><td><center><h5>";

$WEBPAGE_SHUTDOWN = "</h5></center></td></tr></table></center></font><
+/body></html>";

$val = 0;

open(RECORD, "$DATAFILE") or error_page_exit("Could not open datafile"
+);
$val = $_;
close(RECORD);

$val++;

open(RECORD, ">$DATAFILE") or error_page_exit("Could not open datafile
+");
print(RECORD, $val);
close(RECORD);

print $cgi->header();
print $WEBPAGE_INITIALIZE;
print "Your download will begin automatically...(not working yet!)";
print $WEBPAGE_SHUTDOWN;

########################################
## EXIT ################################
########################################

exit;

########################################
## ERROR ###############################
########################################

sub error_page_exit
{
        print $cgi->header();
        print $WEBPAGE_INITIALIZE;
        print "ERROR - Reason:  ";
        print shift;
        print $WEBPAGE_SHUTDOWN;

        exit;
}

########################################
## END OF FILE #########################
########################################

[download]
... thanks again, reaction

Edited by Chady -- retitled from 'noob question'

In reply to CGI script makes Internal Server-error by reaction

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