Replacing a Tag With a List

lisaw has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Perlmonks, I'm in need of some help. I am trying to figure out how to replace a tag in a HTML file with a list pulled from a flat-file db. Here's what I've got so far...the following will open the header.htm file and change any LIST tags with the word My_List. I would like to learn how to open an existing flat-file, which has one entry per line, and display it as a list.

#!/usr/bin/perl

{
&header;
}

sub header
{
$header="header.htm";

open (HEAD,$header) || die "can't open $header";
$header="";
while (<HEAD>){$header .=$_;}
close(HEAD);

$header=~s/\<LIST\>/My_List/gie;

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "$header";
}
1;
[download]

Comment on Replacing a Tag With a List Download Code

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Re: Replacing a Tag With a List by jdporter (Paladin) on Nov 30, 2006 at 21:24 UTC
You don't need that /g, in this case, and you really don't need that /e. `use CGI qw/:standard/; open F, "< $flatfile_db" or die "read $flatfile_db: $!"; my $List = ul(li([<F>])); $header =~ s/<LIST>/$List/i;` [download] We're building the house of the future together.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Replacing a Tag With a List by Joost (Canon) on Nov 30, 2006 at 21:14 UTC
This sort of stuff is really a lot better done using a general templating mechanism. There are tons of them on CPAN "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply]
Re: Replacing a Tag With a List by swampyankee (Parson) on Nov 30, 2006 at 20:56 UTC
I'd suggest you do a supersearch. HTML processing is frought with peril, and is best done with a module. ~~One obvious issue is that your code will break if <LIST> is, for example, <list>~~. <pr>Jdporter pointed out that I misread the regexp with <LIST>, so I struck out the third sentence. I still think that the OP would be better off using a module for this sort of processing. emc At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation. —Igor Sikorsky, reported in AOPA Pilot magazine February 2003.	[reply]
Re^2: Replacing a Tag With a List by jdporter (Paladin) on Nov 30, 2006 at 22:52 UTC
`if ( "/gie" =~ /i/ ) { print "Are you blind?"; }` [download] We're building the house of the future together.	[reply] [d/l]