Minor nit.
A textarea comes in with carriage return/line feed pairs.
/\n/ will leave the carriage returns behind (on windows and nix). It may be better to use /\r\n/ instead.
#!c:/perl/bin/perl.exe
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
my $q = CGI->new;
#my @lines = split /\n/, $q->param(q{txt_area});
my @lines = split /\r\n/, $q->param(q{txt_area});
print $q->header;
print qq{*$_*} for @lines;
<html>
<head>
<title>textarea test</title>
</head>
<body>
<form name = "txt_area_form" action = "/z/bin/test_form.cgi">
<textarea name = "txt_area" rows = "3" cols = "10"></textarea>
<input type = "submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
/\r\n/ produces
*one**two**three*
and /\n/ gives
*one **two **three*
i.e. the carriage returns are still lurking waiting to bite you later on. :-)
| 