firstly apologies A. this is a perl/javascript question
B. Im a perl newbie (ish)
C Im a javascript novice
D. I'm doing somthing stupid!
what's wrong with the code below ??
the function runs (i see the first alert) but in firebug, the next js section causes a "checkbox_form is not defined" and i dont see the alert when no check box's are ticked.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use CGI qw(:standard);
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);


$JSCRIPT=<<EOF;
function validate() {
alert(" yes it ran");
                var checkbox_choices = 0;

// Loop from zero to the one minus the number of checkbox button selec
+tions
for (counter = 0; counter < checkbox_form.checkbox.length; counter++)
{

// If a checkbox has been selected it will return true
// (If not it will return false)
if (checkbox_form.checkbox[counter].checked)
{ checkbox_choices = checkbox_choices + 1; }

}

if (checkbox_choices < 1 )
{
// If there were less then selections made display an alert box
alert("Please make a selection");
return (false);
}

};
EOF
;

print header;
print start_html(-script=>$JSCRIPT);
print h1("this is the main");
print start_form(-action=>"/cgi-bin/mockup/main2.cgi",
        -target=>"mainframe",
        -name=>"checkbox_form",
        -onSubmit=>"return validate()"),
        checkbox_group(-name=>"checkbox",
        -values=>['red','green','blue']),
        p(),submit;
print end_form;
print end_html;
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