#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use Data::Dumper;
use strict;
use CGI qw/:standard/;


my $value = param('name');
my $rowid = $ARGV[0] || $value;
my %data = ();
my @fields = split(/\t/, <FILE>);
chomp @fields;

open FILE , "facultydummy.txt" or die "Cannot open: $!";
while(<FILE>) {
    chomp;     
    my @row = split(/\t/);
    if ($row[0] eq $rowid) {
        @data{@fields} = @row;
        last;
    }        
}
 


print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
if ( keys %data ) {
    # found, display data
    print Dumper \%data;
}
else {
    # not found, show error
    print STDERR "Can't find row '$rowid'\n";
}
[download]

Using -w and strict would *probably* give you an error message something like 'read on closed filehandle'.

You're attempting to populate @fields where you declare it, and before you open the filehandle.

@fields will be empty, which is a problem in your hash slice.

I'm not sure what you intend to do, but I will personally guarantee that -w and strict will catch this error, and that you'll have better luck if there's something in @fields.

What do you mean by "something is still wrong"? Do you mean that it's not in the format you want? If you want to output HTML, replace the entire second part with something like

print header;
if ( keys %data ) {
    # found, display data
    print ul( map { li("$_: $data{$_}") } keys %data);      
}
else {
    # not found, show error
    print h1("Can't find row '$rowid'");
}
[download]

The functions header, ul, li and h1 are all in CGI.pm (and do just what they sound like.) Ideally you'd want to use something like Template Toolkit or Text::Template for you html, rather than embedding it in the perl.