cgi script not work, copy of letter pasted below

Below is a copy of the email I sent to the site where I got this script. I hope you can figure out the question from it,
if not send me a email.



Subject:
            could you check my free for all link files, I cant get them to work
       Date:
            Tue, 29 Dec 1998 22:00:12 -0500
       From:
            John Hewett <johnh619@mail.idt.net>
Organization:
            self
         To:
            mattw@worldwidemart.com


http://thor.prohosting.com/~john314/links.html
and
http://thor.prohosting.com/~john314/linkscgi.txt
The txt file is really my cgi file, I renamed it so you could look
at it. I do have it uploaded to the cgi-bin directory also.
I did chmod and the html file is set to 777 and the cgi file is
set to 755. Also I tried to get it working using the pl extension
instead of the cgi also and it did not work. So that leaves the
file paths in the cgi file and the file path in the html file. I did
enter them as I thought you meant; could you check them all. I really
spent a lot of time on it and no luck. So I tried the simplest situation
in which I only changed the minimum to get it to work, meaning I left
the categories exactly like I found them; so I figured this would
work but no luck. Prohosting is the only free web space host that
allowed any bodies cgi programs. Below is the paragraph in an email
they sent me. It looks like it is okay to use any bodies cgi scripts
according to this. Of course I uploaded to thor.prohosting.com/
/usr/home/~john314/html which is not where they come out at after
uploading. If you want to go over to free.prohosting.com and read
what they say I still think it indicates that I can use any ones
cgi scripts.

CGI

Put your cgi scripts in the html/cgi-bin directory.  Your directory is
located in /usr/home/yourusername.  If you are having problems with your
CGI scripts, make sure you upload them in ASCII format, not binary, set
the permissions correctly(usually chmod a+rx or chmod 755)...

Also I found this:

CGI STUFF

perl - /usr/bin/perl
date - /bin/date
Check the FAQ at http://www.prohosting.com/cgi_faq.html if you have
problems.  Its meant for our virtual
hosting clients, but the same ideas apply to your free account.

I changed the usr/bin/perl statement at the top of the cgi file like
it said. I uploaded in ASCII mode like it said and still I can not get
it working.

Sincerely John Hewett