creating table from 2-Dimensional array in perl has different outputs - html

Question

Hi I am generating table from a 2-Dimensional array in perl.
But the output of my program is different if viewed in browser and viewing page source using developers tool in chrome:
Let me explain-
I have a subroutine to print the table from #RESULT array, the code is below
sub printTableFormattedEmpty {
my #array= #_ ;
print "<table border='0' cellspacing='0' bgcolor='#cfcfcf' cellpadding='0'>\n";
for(my $row_i = 0; $row_i < #array; $row_i++) {
print "<tr style='background-color:#B39DB3;'>\n";
for(my $column_i = 0; $column_i < #{ $array[$row_i] }; $column_i++) {
my $th = ($row_i == 0) ? "th" : "td";
print "</$th>";
print "$array[$row_i][$column_i]";
my $close = ($row_i == 0) ? 'th' : 'td';
print "</$close> \n";
}
print "</tr> \n";
}
print "</table> \n";
}
and i am calling the subroutine as
{
print "Table starts here!\n";
#$RESULT[0]- is array of many elements. u can see in output image
$RESULT[1][0]= 'No Active bookings available for you !';
$RESULT[2][0]= 'Click here to create new Booking !';
&printTableFormattedEmpty(#RESULT);
}
Now here i am not getting the expected output in a table , i am getting different output as shown in 2 figure:
when i inspect element and inspect the table i get:
But when i view page source of the page iam getting output formatted as table as shown in the fig:
I am really confused with this two types of Output, the both images are of the same page without refreshing.
How is this possible!
Did i do any mistake in my program or its something else.
Please Help me with This.

Answer 1

This is a typo!
There is a slash / in your opening HTML tag output.
for(my $column_i = 0; $column_i < #{ $array[$row_i] }; $column_i++) {
my $th = ($row_i == 0) ? "th" : "td";
# V HERE
print "</$th>";
print "$array[$row_i][$column_i]";
my $close = ($row_i == 0) ? 'th' : 'td';
print "</$close> \n";
}
Remove that slash and it will be fine.
As to why your two outputs are different: The HTML inspector shows the DOM structure after it has been parsed by the browser. It does not include invalid elements. Since stray closing elements are not valid, it's likely the parser just omitted them, so they are gone.
Viewing the source code on the other hand shows the real, unparsed code, which contains the wrong markup with the faulty HTML tags included. That is also where I saw the extra slashes. (read: your variable names are badly chosen. You would have seen it yourself had it been something like $open_tag and $closing_tag).