If this is a CGI script, you really need to print a header:

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

You can also do this with CGI.pm:

use CGI;
my $use_me_im_better = new CGI;
print $use_me_im_better->header;
[download]

And while you're in there, you should also do

use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

This will print the error messages on the screen.

Sarah
If Bill Gates can name a company after his "bedroom" problems, I can have a stupid sig that points it out

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

# rest of code
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use CGI ':standard';

print header();

# rest of code
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perl -pie 's/date/localtime/eg' guestbook.html
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Jeff

R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--
L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--

From your post the context is not clear but there are some problems with your code. First you don't really need the -i in this context see perlman:perlrun. Your open opens the file for reading and writing. This is fine. You set $out to '' which is fine. You then iterate over your file handle assigning each line to $_. You modify $_ substituting the string 'date' with localtime() - this is fine but you don't actually do anything with the result. You then seek the start of the file, print a null string ($out) to it and truncate. You don't check the return values of seek, truncate or tell which is generally considered good form. Anyway the net result is your code will erase the entire contents of the target file. If the aim of this code is to open a file and change all the strings 'date' to the value of localtime then this works:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $file = "c:/test.txt";

open(F,"+<$file") or die "Could not open $file: $!";
my @file = <F>;
s/date/localtime/eg for @file;
seek F,0,0   or die "Could not seek in $file: $!";
truncate F,0 or die "Could not truncate $file: $!";
print F @file;
close F;
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I hope this helps.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n\w+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

#!/usr/local/bin/perl 
use strict;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";


my $file = "new_guestbook.html";

open(F,"+< $file") or die "Could not open $file: $!";
my @file = <F>;
s/date/localtime/eg for @file;
seek F,0,0   or die "Could not seek in $file: $!";
truncate F,0 or die "Could not truncate $file: $!";
print F @file;
close F;
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You forgot print $file; which sends the modified contents to the browser. Your code modifies the file but never sends anything other than the header to the browser.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

Unusual to be able to correct tye but you actually need print @file to print the file contents as $file is just the file name. To clarify print F @file goes to the file handle we have opened called <F>. print @file goes to the default file handle (in this case STDOUT) which is what gets sent to the browser.

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n\w+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

Do you mean the file update doesn't happen, or that you don't see anything in your browser?

Other than the http header, you're not sending anything to the browser.