You have a misplaced body tag which is nonsensical in the start_html context Try this program (note that it doesnt send xhtml).

(Tested on solaris with perl5.0503)

Script: 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI;
use strict;
my $p = new CGI;
print $p->header;
print $p->start_html(-title=>'Welcome to 0.0.0.0!',
                     -author=>'ronan@hackmare.com',
                     -base=>{href => 'http://0.0.0.0/cgi-bin/dir/'},
                     -meta=>{'keywords'=>'pharoah secret mummy',
                               'copyright'=>'Hackmarish Things Happening'},
                     -style=>{'src'=>'/styles/style1.css'},
		     -dtd=>1,
                     -BGCOLOR=>'blue',
		     -vlink => 'black');
print $p->p('Is this what you want?');
print $p->end_html;

Returns: 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Welcome to 0.0.0.0!</TITLE>
<LINK REV=MADE HREF="mailto:ronan%40hackmare.com">
<BASE HREF="http://localhost/perlmonk.pl">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="pharoah secret mummy">
<META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="Hackmarish Things Happening">
<LINK REL="stylesheet" HREF="/styles/style1.css">
</HEAD><BODY BGCOLOR="blue" VLINK="black"><P>Is this what you want?</P></BODY></HTML>

This code was adapted from the CGI.pm html POD
--hackmare

In reply to Re: CGI.pm idiosyncrasy? by hackmare
in thread CGI.pm idiosyncrasy? by dusk

Title:
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and:  <code> code here </code>
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