It shouldn't matter to HTML::Template what your select's name is. For consistancy I often name my form names, tmpl names all the same as my database column names and I've never had a problem with it.

From your small snippet of code I can't really spot an error, it could be in your perl code itself. at any rate I'd suggest joining the HTML-Template-Users list (html-template-users@lists.sourceforge.net) and asking your question there. The author frequents the list and there are lots of other smart people (smarter than me) that would probably be able to tell you.

Am I off base in my interpretation?

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Carp 'verbose';
use HTML::Template;


my $temp_text = <<EOT;
 <select name="type">
          <tmpl_loop name="TYPE"> 
              <option value="<tmpl_var name="n_event">" <tmpl_var name
+="sel">> <tmpl_var name="t_event">
            </option>
          </tmpl_loop>
 </select>
EOT

my $tpl = HTML::Template->new(scalarref => \$temp_text);
my @ary = map {n_event => $_, sel=>$_,t_event=>$_},
  qw(foo bar baz cliche trope);
$tpl->param(TYPE=>\@ary);
print $tpl->output;
__END__
 <select name="type">
                   
                        <option value="foo" foo> foo
                        </option>
                   
                        <option value="bar" bar> bar
                        </option>
                   
                        <option value="baz" baz> baz
                        </option>
                   
                        <option value="cliche" cliche> cliche
                        </option>
                   
                        <option value="trope" trope> trope
                        </option>
                  
 </select>
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