Line breaks in html with perl script

BroX · 01-10-2005, 03:02 AM

Hey all,

I have no clue about programming, however I manage (by error and trial mainly) to modify preexisting scripts. But this thing is killing me! I have the following code in a perl script that should write html form input to a file and return the same parameter/value pairs back to the internet page so the person can read what he/she submitted.

The data that's written to the file is nicely formatted, i.e. with line breaks. However, and here is my problem:

The parameter/value pairs that are returned to the page are all in one line. Whatever I try, with /n or , it has no effect.

Here is part of the perl script. The bold part is the problem.

Code:

 print FILEHANDLE "--Submitted--: $Hour:$Minute $Day-$Month-$Year\n"; #write to file 
 
  print "<h2>Thank you for your registration!</h2><br>"; 
  print "<h3>The following details have successfully been submitted at $Hour:$Minute $Day-$Month-$Year:</h3><br>"; #writes to page 
  print ""; 
 
  foreach $parameter (@params) { 
 
        print FILEHANDLE "$parameter:" . param($parameter) ,"\n"; #writes to file 
 
        print "$parameter " . param($parameter) ,"<br>"; #writes to page 
  } 
 
  print FILEHANDLE "\n"; 
  close (FILEHANDLE); #close the file 
 
  print end_html;

This is what I now get returned to the page:

Code:

title Dr. firstname=Leon lastname=blabla institute=blabla department=blabla address1= address2= city= zip= country= tel= email= info=More blabla

Can somebody give me a hint here?

Cheers, Leon.

rjlee · 01-10-2005, 03:09 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by LJSBrokken
[B] print "$parameter " . param($parameter) ," "; #writes to page

Try:

Code:

        print "$parameter " . param($parameter) ."<br>"; #writes to page

i.e. replace the comma with a dot. With a comma, the is passed as a second parameter to print. I'm not quite sure how Perl handles this, but you can find out with:

Code:

perldoc -f print

With a dot between two strings, Perl will concatenate the two strings and treat them as a single parameter to print.

BroX · 01-10-2005, 03:40 AM

Quote:

i.e. replace the comma with a dot. With a comma, the is passed as a second parameter to print.

Thanks for your reply, but unfortunately a dot instead of a comma gives exactly the same output...

Other options?

Cheers, Leon,

Cedrik · 01-10-2005, 05:02 AM

Just add a "\n" like :

Code:

print "$parameter " . param($parameter) ."<br>\n"; #writes to page

BroX · 01-10-2005, 05:13 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cedrik
Just add a "\n" like :

Code:

print "$parameter " . param($parameter) ." \n"; #writes to page

I tried that, but that doesn't work...

rjlee · 01-10-2005, 05:18 AM

Please post the HTML code that your program produces (rather than the text as rendered by your browser).

BroX · 01-10-2005, 05:27 AM

Hmmm... let me guess... must have something to do with XHTML instead of HTML? Anyways, here is the source code of the returned page:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html
	PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.0//EN"
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic10.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-US"><head><title>Registration</title>
</head><body><h2>Thank you for your registration!</h2><h3>The following details have successfully been submitted at 13:25 10-1-2005:</h3>title Ms.
firstname=Leon
lastname=blabla
institute=blabla
department=blabla
address1=
address2=
city=
zip=
country=
tel=
email=
delegate=full
acc_person=no
vegetarian=no
info=
<br>
</body></html>

Genjix · 01-10-2005, 05:35 AM

Quote:

The parameter/value pairs that are returned to the page are all in one line. Whatever I try, with /n or , it has no effect.

im assuming your not stupid, but theyre all on one line because there are no line breaks between them.

rjlee · 01-10-2005, 05:36 AM

First off, with XHTML you should use not (in XHTML, all tags must be closed; using a / at the end of the tag is a short-hand for spelling out the closing tag).

You also have no … tag enclosing the text in the body. You can't just type text, it needs to be enclosed in a block-level tag such as or <hnumber>. You might like to look at http://validator.w3.org/

You do seem to be missing the from the end of each line. I'm not certain what's happening to cause this problem; do you get this with a dot as well as with a comma? I would suggest trying it as two commands:

Code:

print "$parameter " . param($parameter); # writes to page
print "<br>\n"; #writes to page

BroX · 01-10-2005, 07:36 AM

Genjix:
I know the line breaks are missing, my question was how to modify the perl script so they would be there.

Rjlee:
Why does the code get returned as XHTML and not HTML?

Writing it as two separate lines gives exactly the same result (source code also). Similar when I write instead of . As judged from the html source, it appears that the only gets added after the whole list of parameters (or am I wrong?), instead of after each of them.

Where would I add the .... in the perl script?

Here's the complete perl script I use, maybe that will shed a light on the matter:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl  
 
use CGI qw(:standard); 
 
print header; 
print start_html('Registration'); 
 
if (param()) { 
   
  @params=param(); 
 
  ($Second,$Minute,$Hour,$Day,$Month,$Year,$WeekDay,$DayOfYear,$IsDST)=localtime(time()); 
 
  unless(open (FILEHANDLE, '>>/www/users/l/leobro/participants.txt')) #open file for appending 
  { 
        print "could not open file"; 
        print end_html; 
        exit(0); 
  } 
  $Month+=1; 
  $Year+=1900; 
 
  print FILEHANDLE "--Submitted--: $Hour:$Minute $Day-$Month-$Year\n"; #write to file 
 
  print "<h2>Thank you for your registration!</h2>"; 
  print "<h3>The following details have successfully been submitted at $Hour:$Minute $Day-$Month-$Year:</h3>"; #writes to page 
  print ""; 
 
  foreach $parameter (@params) { 
 
        print FILEHANDLE "$parameter:" . param($parameter) ,"\n"; #writes to file 
 
        print "$parameter " . param($parameter); 
        print "<br>\n"; #writes to page 
} 
 
  print FILEHANDLE "\n"; 
  close (FILEHANDLE); #close the file 
 
  print end_html; 
 
}else{ 
 
    print "You need to have a html form to pass parameters from"; 
    print end_html; 
}

Cedrik · 01-10-2005, 07:44 AM

He said you not (not the space between the r and the /)

try :
print "$parameter " . param($parameter) . " \n";

(here the \n is not required but it is just for good formating xhtml code)

BroX · 01-10-2005, 07:56 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cedrik
He said you not (not the space between the r and the /)

try :
print "$parameter " . param($parameter) . " \n";

(here the \n is not required but it is just for good formating xhtml code)

Tried that as well, without result...

Cedrik · 01-10-2005, 08:06 AM

What web browser do you use (with version number) ?

BroX · 01-10-2005, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cedrik
What web browser do you use (with version number) ?

Firefox 1.0 on Slack-current.
I will check how a w2k box behaves (with MSIExplorer Mozilla and Firefox).

bigearsbilly · 01-10-2005, 08:19 AM

this works for me...

Code:

# debug, print params
# ===================

sub print_params
{
    if (param()) {
	
	print qq(<pre>);
	foreach $param (param()) {
	    print "$param = " . param($param) . "\n" ;
	}
	print qq(<pre>);
	print hr;
    }
}