[techtalk] cgi scripts & html output

[Shelly L. Hokanson]

hi all -

question. i've been pulling my hair out on this one (and essentially given
up on it). i'm about a two-week newbie to implementing cgi scripts written
in perl. after learning how they reference directories (system vs. url) and
setting correct permissions, i'm a happy camper. playing with cgi scripts
left and right.

found one that has me stuck.

it's a message forum script, called DForum. here's the link to the actual
script if anyone wants to look at it.
http://www.dansteinman.com/dforum/forum

i got the script and its admin script working (just go up one level in that
url above to get to the main page for the script), so it's configured
correctly. here's my problem.

the author uses the EOF command to tell the script to output html. (what
does EOF stand for, anyway?). according to him (and the other scripts i've
played with that use that command), whatever is typed in the EOF section is
read as html, so it's all typical html markup. good enough. well. one
particular step in the message forum posting process you input your message,
then click a "preview" button (form inputs in the html). all fine and dandy,
but for some reason, this script omits one entire line of the html, where it
would send the input text to the final post output process. on screen, i see
everything correctly except where that line would be, it shows
">
obviously the end of the line of html that's being omitted. i can't figure
out why it's doing it. there's no odd line breaks in the html, and all of
the variables seem to be referenced correctly in the script.

here's a link to what the problem is if you want to reproduce it. it's a
test of a message forum on my techchron.com site:
http://jove.prohosting.com/~tchron/dforum/forum.pl

pretend like you're going to post a message, and when you get to the
"preview" page (where you would click "submit") is where you'll see the odd
character. if you view the source, you'll see that the final input for the
body of the message is omitted, and only that last tag bit is shown. compare
that to the actual script, under the commented heading "prints the preview
page", you'll see that it looks to be correctly coded html for a form.

i dunno.

i've spent over 8 hours trying to figure it out, and it's driving me nuts! i
tried to give up but there's already such a huge time investment that i'm
irked by it.

if there's any programming gurus out there, this is probably a piece of
cake. unfortunately i only know enough about perl to make me dangerous.  =)

thanks all,

shelly
techchron.com beta 2 - girls are techies too!
http://jove.prohosting.com/~tchron

come write for us!