make my file readable as either Perl or HTML
- by JoelFan
In the spirit of the "Perl Preamble" where a script works properly whether executed by a shell script interpreter or the Perl interpreter...
I have a Perl script which contains an embedded HTML document (as a "heredoc"), i.e.:
#!/usr/bin/perl
... some perl code ...
my $html = <<'END' ;
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
... more HTML ...
</html>
END
... perl code that processes $html ...
I would like to be able to work on the HTML that's inside the Perl script and check it out using a web browser, and only run the script when the HTML is the way I want. To accomplish this, I need the file to be openable both as an HTML file and as a Perl script.
I have tried various tricks with Perl comments and HTML comments but can't get it quite perfect. It doesn't have to be "strictly legal" HTML... just displayable in a browser with no (or minimal) Perl garbage visible.
