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Hi, thank you schodckwm, here is my testing code. I used active perl 5.81 on windows xp. It seems that the I need use \\ to represent the '\' on windows to represent directory delimiter. The code works if I use $filename = "test.txt";.

#!c:/perl/bin/perl -w
use CGI;

# only files in cgi-bin directory works?
#filename = "C:\\Program Files\\Apache Group\\Apache2\\htdocs\\project
+s\\Generate_Conc_xls\\test.txt";
$filename = "test.txt";

$header1 = "Content-disposition: attachment; filename=$filename\n";
$mime_type = "application/octet-stream";

#print header for downloading file to client
print $header1;
print "Content-Type: $mime_type\n\n";

#print content to client file
open (READ, "<$filename");
binmode READ;
local $/;
print <READ>;
close(READ);
[download]

Thanks a lot.

Change your code to test that your open succeeds:

open( READ, "<$filename" ) or die "Failed to open $filename - error $!
+";
[download]

That might provide some clues in your webservers error log.

Steve
---
steve.org.uk

Is the webserver CHROOTed?

If it is, then the path to access the file (if you can at all), would not be the same as it would on the hard drive.

I'm not sure what the implications are with CHROOT and windows, or if it's even possible, not being a windows user (well, for games, just not for servers).

I'm going to do with the basic rule of debugging CGI scripts -- read your error log. If you don't have access to the error log, for whatever reason, bug your admin.

Thanks a lot for your guys. The suggestions are all helpful. Now I have cleared the following issues:

1. It is not because of the server since the server did not give the errors in error log.

2. The script itself works fine without error or warning when it is running. Double backslash is required if put the file path in "" on windows. I will test if it is ok if put in '' and one backslash.

3. It seems that the problem maybe related to windows OS as suggested by nerfherder. But I have no clue on it now.

I would pin down the problem to the file format now. It seems that the text file can be read out from outside cgi-bin. I will b back soon if I got it solved.

Thanks.

Hi, All,

I pinned down the problem to the data file itself because I can download other files outside of cgi-bin to the client. I suspected the data file was somehow damaged when I got it. But I still can open in a text editor. And strange enoght, I can open it in a local perl script!

I also tested that it is not because the data file is too large as nobull suggested. Thanks for gam3 for reminding me that to use file path in '' with one backslash. It is much easy to read and comfortable.

Thank you all again for giving advices on this question. It is helpful. Really appreciate it!

$filename = C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\projects\Generate_Conc_xls\test.txt';