I need a PERL command that will "print" the contents of an HTML file.
I want to create some complicated HTML, save it in a file, and then
have my PERL script show that to the user. Including the HTML in the
PERL script makes it difficult to update, easier to do it in an
external file.

Hello cluelessone-ga,

Thank-you for your question.

The easiest way to do this is to collect all the information you have
output into the HTML file and print it on the screen.

This can be done using this small snippet.

If you have any questions or require any further assistance please do
not hesitate to ask for clarification.

# read the html file into an array
open (TXTFILE, "/path/to/file.html");
@lines = <TXTFILE>;
close(TXTFILE);

# place the contents of the @lines array into a variable
$all_lines = join("",@lines);
# replace the < character with its HTML equivalent &lt;
# this enables the code to be viewable
$all_lines =~ s/</\&lt;/g;

print $all_lines;

it sounds to me like what you really need here is a templating system.
 The standard way to do this is with the HTML::Template package:
http://sam.tregar.com/html_template.html

If you are unfamilair with what i mean by "html templating", basically
you save an html file that has special tags which let you inline
variables and loops etc from perl.  Then in your perl script, you set
the variables etc.  Like magic, everything is replaced in the html
file with the values of the variables from your perl script.