sub parse_template {
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Sub to generate and print a template to the browser.
#

# check to see if we need to bypass printing a header. this is
# passed to use from the error_sub.

my $bypass_header = $_[1];
print $query->header() unless $bypass_header;

# find out which template should be displayed - this is either passed from
# another sub or from the browser.

my $pg = $_[0] || $query->param('pg');
my $file = $PATH_TEMPLATE . $pg;

# slurp the entire file into $HTML using $/ to enable slurp mode.

my $HTML;

{ local $/;

open (FILE,"<$file") || &error_html("Could not open $file. $!");
$HTML = <FILE>;
close FILE;
}

# do the template parsing. this replaces all <%..%> tags with the
# equivalent value in the hash %tmpl.

$HTML =~ s/<%(\w+)%>/$tmpl{$1}/g;

print $HTML;

}