that did the trick. thanks! it looks like this now:

sub getrows {
my @records;
my $value = param('name');
my $rowid = $ARGV[0] || $value;
my %data = ();
my @fields = split(/\t/, <FILE>);
chomp @fields;
while(<FILE>) {
    chomp;     
    my @row = split(/\t/);
    if ($row[0] eq $rowid) {
        my %data; 
        @data{@fields} = @row;
        push @records, \%data; 
        
    }        
}

close (FILE);
print header;
for my $ref (@records){
    my %data = %$ref;
    print ul( map { li("$data{$_}") } keys %data);
    
}


}
[download]

now i have to make it print nicely in tables. back to work.