Script Bug - Inserts spaces after every return character

[micronack]

{NOTE . = space}
I made a script to allow me to edit my webpages online through a text area in my cgi script but I've run into a problem. For whatever reason the text area seems to put spaces in front of each line {except for the first} so,
line one
line two
line three

becomes
line one
.line two
.line three
next time it becomes
line one
..line two
..line three

eventually it winds up being like
line one
.......................................line two
.......................................line three

Its made a mess of my files.
Is there a way to process the input from the text area to remove all of the spaces before the start of the lines?
I'm hoping that I can get it worked out so while using the script my pages will wind up like it was to start with.
Thanks, any help would be greatly appreciated :)
John

[numberwhun]

Have you tried anything so far to do it? My hint would be to use a substitution regular expression, something along the lines of the following:

s/^\s+//

I leave it in your hands to pass each line through it and see if it works. Let us know if you need more assistance. If you do (and in the future), please be sure and post your code when asking for help. :-)

Regards,

Jeff

[KevinADC]

textareas do not magically put in extra spaces. You can of course use a regexp like Jeff posted to work around your problem. But the real problem is elsewhere, most likely in the function you use to initially process the form data or when you print it to the file.

[micronack]

I haven't tried anything to fix the problem yet as I'm not really sure how to go about it and you can probably tell from the code below that I'm not real good at writing cgi. I get by but thats about it. Part of the problem may be that the cgi script doesn't start the files, they are normally written using coffee cup or note pad then this script is used for maintaining the pages.
Anyway heres the script its just a little over 100 lines so I posted the whole thing. To run it make a test html file with a link to the cgi script in the file. the password is pass

#!/usr/bin/perl
 
#Setup system variables
 
for ($i = 0; $i < 2; $i++){
    ($i eq 0) ? ($f=<stdin>) : ($f=$ENV{QUERY_STRING});
    @f = split(/\&/, $f);
    foreach $l (@f) {
        ($n,$v) = split(/\=/, $l);
        $v =~ s|\+| |g;
        $v =~ s|%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])|pack("C", hex($1))|ge;
        $form{$n}=$v;
    }
}
 
$book = $ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'};
@sbook = [split(/\b/, $book)];
$a=0;
while ($sbook[0][$a] ne "") {
    if ($sbook[0][$a] eq "com"){
        $b = $a;
    }
    $a++;
}
$a = $b+2;
while ($sbook[0][$a] ne "") {
    $filename=$filename.$sbook[0][$a];
    $a++;
}
$c = $a-3;
$back = $sbook[0][$c];
$c++;
$back = $back.$sbook[0][$c];
$c++;
$back = $back.$sbook[0][$c];
 
if ($form{ACTION} eq "save") {
    &SAVE;
 
} elsif ($form{ACTION} eq "view") {
    &VIEW;
 
} else {
    &LOGIN;
}
 
sub LOGIN {
    print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
    print qq~
<center>
<form action="$ENV{SCRIPT_NAME}?ACTION=view" method="post">
<input type="text" name="password" value=""><BR>
<input type="hidden" name="fname" value="$filename">
<input type="hidden" name="bname" value="$back">
<input type="submit" value=" ">
</form>
<a href=$ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'}>Cancel</a>
~;
}
 
sub VIEW {
    $fname = $form{fname};
    $bname = $form{bname};
    if ($form{password} ne "pass") {
        die;
    }
    open(MESSAGE, "../$fname");
    my @temp = <MESSAGE>;
    close(MESSAGE);
    print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
    print qq~
<center>
<form action="$ENV{SCRIPT_NAME}?ACTION=save" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="password" value="$form{password}">
<textarea name="content" rows="20" cols="90">@temp</textarea>
<input type="hidden" name="fname" value="$fname">
<input type="hidden" name="bname" value="$bname">
<BR><input type="submit" value="Save Changes">
</form>
<!--<a href=$ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'}>Cancel</a>
<form action="$ENV{SCRIPT_NAME}?ACTION=edcon" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="password" value="$form{password}">
<input type="submit" value="Edit Converter">
</form>-->
~;
}
 
 
sub SAVE {
    $fname=$form{fname};
    $bname=$form{bname};
    if ($form{password} ne "pass") {
        die;
    }
    #get date and create backup
    $a = localtime;
    $g = substr($a,4,3); # month
    $d = substr($a, -4); # year
    $c = substr($a,8,2); # Day
    $e = substr($a,11,2); # hour
    $f = substr($a,14,2); # min
    if ($c<10) {
        $c = "0".substr($c,1);
    } # put 0 in front 03 05 etc
    $date = $g."-".$c."-".$d."---".$e."-".$f;
    open(MESSAGE, "../$fname");
    my @temp = <MESSAGE>;
    close(MESSAGE);
    open(MESSAGE, ">../backup/$date$bname");
    print MESSAGE "@temp";
    close(MESSAGE);
    #endbackup
 
    open(MESSAGE, ">../$fname");
    print MESSAGE "$form{content}";
    close(MESSAGE);
    print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
    print qq~
<center>
Changes saved<BR>
<a href="$fname">go to page</a>
~;
}
 

[KevinADC]

I can't tell what might be the problem just by looking at the code. BTW, the code is really quite bad. I urge you to not use it at all.