Perl 101 (part 8) - Putting It To The Test

I am running around the net like a Carl Lewis, trying to find an easy perl sciprt to allow a file to be emailed. How do you do THAT!

K

http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/WebTechniques/col46.html
maybe?

Opening a file is a high overhead operation (in processing time.) Much more efficient to open in read write mode:
<CODE>
open(FH,"+<$FileName);
$Counter = <FH>;
chomp($Counter);
$Counter++;
seek(FH,0,0);
truncate(FH,0);
print FH "$Count\n";
close (FH);
</CODE>

Also, on an active site, you want lock the file or else there is a chance someone else could accidently reset the counter to zero.

It is always good practice to add a die() statment when opening a file.

An example:

<!-- Code -->
<p><pre><font color=#008000><xmp>
open(IN,$file) or die "Cannot open $file: $!";
</xmp></font></pre><p>
<!-- Code -->


$! contains the reason why the file wasn't opened.

Thanks

I'll look into it

Hello.

I am really new to PERL and want to know where to put all of the code. What I mean is where do I paste the CGI bit and the HTML bit etc...

Also after I have cut & pasted the code into my HTML doc, do I have to type any more code or variables into it?

Thanks for your help.

Clueless.

Hello.

I am really new to PERL and want to know where to put all of the code. What I mean is where do I paste the CGI bit and the HTML bit etc... (in what order).

Also after I have cut & pasted the code into my HTML doc, do I have to type any more code or variables into it?

Thanks for your help.

Clueless.

Its happening man.

I was able to get this program up and running w/o any problems, but any punctuation left in the comments field is converted into ASCII. Any way around this?

This has been a very enjoyable series. I haven't written this much code in years!

How is locking done? That indeed is important. I had to abandon my old counter because it would reset often -- that was why.

<CODE>
open(FILE,"+<$FileName");
flock(FILE,2);
open read update and write back
flock(FILE,8)
</CODE>
one caveat, only works on Unix systems.

Urb

How do you set it up so it checks to make sure all the fields were entered and have valid information?

hey!

Well the tutorial was good and i must say very informative. I have C/C++ knoledge and I am working a s an intern for a firm. IT needed me to read Perl tutorial which i did and it wwas very informative.

The only thing which is baffling me or i am still confused is about what is CGI script and whats the use of it with webpages where should we have these things. I mean all was going well till this CGI script and all. I don't get whole of it.

Thankx
Jawad.