If open fails, the system error is stored in $!. You should return that error message and check your logfiles.

open my $handle, '>', $file  or die "$file: open failed: $!";
print $handle "text\n"       or die "$file: print faield: $!";
close $handle                or die "$file: close failed: $!";
[download]

If you haven't access to the server's logfiles, try using

use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
[download]

That should send fatal error messages to the browser.

update: reformatted code

I see you are using a filename without path, this means you are opening the file in the current directory. But while from command line you know which directory is current, when your script is running as cgi you can't know it, so you should always use fully qualified filenames and/or explicitly set the current directory with chdir.

My thoughts too. There may be also permissions issues, like the user by which the webserver is running not having permissions to write the files.

Yes, but it is difficult checking the write permission on a dir you don't know where is... :)

Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man."

Everyone else has nailed it -- permission issue (probably.) Just thought I could throw one more idea at you:

use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Temp qw/ tempfile tempdir /;

my $dir = tempdir();
my ($fh, $filename) = tempfile( DIR => $dir );

print "Temporary file '$filename' created.\n";
print $fh "Stuff you want in the file.\n";
[download]

That will pretty much guarantee the creation of the file. It creates a unique subfolder inside of the $temp directory and creates a unique filename to write to. This is useful with webapps because each subsequent request won't clobber the previous file.

Kurt