I hve tried the a few suggestion that peopl have given me but the problem continues so I broke down the code to the smallest format that I could use and decided to resubmit it. 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use CGI ':standard';
print header();
print start_html();
open FILE, "user/test";
    for $line (<FILE>) {
    if (index $line, "gold" > -1) {
        $GoldLine=$line;
    }
}
close FILE;
sub getgold {
    my $start= index $GoldLine, ":" + 2;
    result substr $start, length $line;
}
getgold;
end_html();

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In reply to same 500 server error problem shorter question by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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