... using a here doc and xslt transforms for outputting html ...

In the last months or so I wrote a bunch of Perl scripts for compute cluster control - which do lots of wicked rsh's into a cluster an present nice html output to the coworkers.

I started out w/heredocs, then changed that to qq{..}-strings, then throwed the towel and used _{(sound on)} a nice little module called:

HTML::Template

This was a stunning experience, after (short) working through the details, I ended up with a HTML-File per script (same name as the script + .htm) and several very clean and easy readable Perl scripts.

The proloque to the action would be identical across the scripts, in my case that's sth. like:

   ...
   $scriptname = ...                            # the scripts name
  (my $srv = $ENV{SERVER_NAME}) =~ s/\..+//;    # where are we now
   my $srvloc = "/srv/web/$srv/html";           # assume directory

   # prepare HTML output
   my $template = HTML::Template->new(filename => "$srvloc/cluster/$sc
+riptname.htm");
   ...
[download]

the corresponding html would be edited in Dreamweaver (or whatever you like) and look like:

  ...
   <td class="pid">
     <TMPL_IF idproc>
     <a href="/cgi-bin/myprocess.pl/ii/<TMPL_VAR NAME="host">/<TMPL_VA
+R NAME="pid">" 
        title="[pid No.]"><TMPL_VAR NAME="pid">&nbsp;
     </a>
     </TMPL_IF>
   </td>
  ...
[download]

The variables set in the perl program would show up in the html as

 <TMPL_VAR NAME="varname">
[download]

and the perl program would set the variables like:

   ...
   $template->param( 
         host       => $host,  
         cpuid      => $cpuid,
         cpuidcolor => $cpuidtab{$cpuid}
   );
   ...
   ...
   print "Content-type: text/html\n\n", $template->output;
[download]

where he last line would send the html to the browser.

So that's what I'd recommend. HTML::Template is ideal suited for this kind of CGI-script things.

Regards

mwa