OK, lets take a step back here, you are getting confused between what CGI is, and what the file is.

This is what a CGI application should return TO THE WEB SERVER.

--------------------------------------------------
Content-type: text/plain (or text/html and so on)
Some-Other: headers
(a blank line)
The contents
of the file
goes here
--------------------------------------------------

[download]

So to send a text file the CGI prints this to STDOUT:

--------------------------------------------------
Content-type: text/plain

Hello World!
--------------------------------------------------

[download]

... and a HTML file

--------------------------------------------------
Content-type: text/html

<html>
<body>
Hello World!
</body>
</html>
--------------------------------------------------

[download]

... and an XML file

--------------------------------------------------
Content-type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<tag>Hello World!</tag>
--------------------------------------------------

[download]

I hope by now you see it's quite obvious you can't just spit the output of a CGI into a file and expect a browser to load that file, because you've incorrectly stuffed the extra headers into the file.

It's no wonder the XML parser is freaking out.

If you make a script that uses CGI.pm and adds the headers to the output, you can ONLY run it in a webserver.

It's not useful for producing the file standalone any more.

20070821 Janitored by Corion: Fixed stray </code> tag

In reply to I don't think you understand CGI still by Anonymous Monk
in thread XML::Generator bad header? by hallikpapa

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