• use CGI, don't reinvent the wheel.
• ALWAYS CHECK THE RETURN ON SYSTEM CALLS SUCH AS open()

The bigger problems you have with re-inventing wheels that should not be reinvented notwithstanding, your main problem is the fundamentally broken loop that is looking at the data that came from the file. Without resorting to rewriting code for you, in english your program does this:

• Open $logpath and read in the contents
• Iterate through the lines found there, and
  • If the browser in this line is the one from the form, increment it's counter and print it to the log
  • If the browser in this line is not the one from the form, print it to STDOUT

In a nutshell, this means that the browser that matches the form entry gets printed to the log, while the others get printed to the browser. I bet if you looked at the logfile, you would find it always contains at most 1 line.

There are however, several other problems with this code:

• Always, Always, Always use '-w' and 'use strict'.
• Doing your own parameter parsing instead of using CGI is just asking for trouble.
• Not checking the return code from your open calls means you may be truncating your logfile to rewrite it, even though the script didn't read any data from it in the first place.
• Not handling locking means that if two people submit the form at the same time, your logfile could very likely be nuked by the second one.

"In a nutshell, this means that the browser that matches the form entry gets printed to the log, while the others get printed to the browser."
I forgot to remark on that in my reply, but I didn't undertand the point of that print either. In fact, it isn't even being printed to the browser I think, because the print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; doesn't occur till later.
chas

It didn't cause an error so I didn't notice it.

Thanks again everybody.

#!/perl/bin/perl -w

use CGI;

$q = new CGI;

for $key ( $q->param() ) { $form{$key} = $q->param($key); }

$logpath = "data/browser.dat";  

$temppath = "C:/Documents and Settings/Owner/My Documents/My Website/c
+gi-bin/data/temp.dat";

$browser = $form{'browser'};

open (LOG, "$logpath");
@data = <LOG>;
close(LOG);

$not_found = 1;

if($browser) { 
    open (LOG, ">$logpath");
    foreach $line(@data) {
        chomp($line);
        ($fcount,$fbrowser)= split(/\|/,$line);
        if ($fbrowser eq $browser) {
        $not_found = 0;
        $fcount = $fcount+1;
        print LOG "$fcount|$fbrowser\n";
        }
        else {
        print LOG "$line\n";
        }    
    }
    close(LOG);

    if($not_found) {
    open (LOG,">>$logpath");
    print LOG "1|$browser";
    close(LOG);
    }
}

# prints out log and form to browser

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

open (LOG, "$logpath");
@data = <LOG>;
close(LOG);

foreach $line(@data) {
chomp($line);
print "$line<br>";
}
close(LOG);

print <<EOT;
<FORM ACTION="basic.pl" METHOD="POST">
<SELECT NAME="browser">
    <OPTION VALUE="microsoft">microsoft</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="netscape">netscape</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="aol">aol</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="mozilla">mozilla</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="opera">opera</OPTION>
    </SELECT>
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE="Submit">
</FORM>

EOT




# If you would like to suggest a better way to sort here is the rest o
+f the code.

sub getBrowsers { 
%browse=();
open(INF,"$logpath") || print "Cannot open logs.dat file\n";
@hits= <INF>;
close(INF);

open(TEMP,">>$temppath") || print "Cannot open temp.dat file\n";
foreach $i (@hits) {
    chomp($i);
    ($hits,$browser)= split(/\|/,$i);
    for ($t=1;$t<$hits;$t++) {
    print TEMP "$browser\n";
    }
}
close(TEMP);

open(TEMP,"$temppath") || print "Cannot open temp.dat file\n";
@temp= <TEMP>;
close(TEMP);


foreach $i (@temp) {
    $browse{$i}++;
}
print <<EOT;
    <TABLE width="99%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" border="0" bgCo
+lor="#0080ff">
    <TR><TD bgColor="#ccccff" height="25" colspan="2"><SPAN class="tit
+le">Top Browsers</SPAN></TD></TR>
EOT
$max = 1;
foreach $key (sort BrowserSort (keys(%browse))) { 
    ($max > $browse{$key}) || ($max = $browse{$key});
    ($max >= 401) && ($divisor = $max/401);
    ($max < 401) && ($multiplier = 401/$max);
    ($divisor) && ($width = sprintf("%0d",$browse{$key}/$divisor));
    ($multiplier) && ($width = sprintf("%0d",$browse{$key} * $multipli
+er));
    print "<tr><td bgColor=\#FFFFFF align=left><a href=$key>$key</a><b
+r><img src=../images/pix.gif width=1 height=2><br>
    <img src=../images/blue.gif width=$width height=10></td><td     bg
+Color=\#FFFFFF align=right valign=bottom>$browse{$key}</td></tr>\n";
}
print "</table><p>\n";
} 

sub BrowserSort { 
  $browse{$b} <=> $browse{$a}; 
} 
    
&getBrowsers;

unlink($temppath);
[download]

sorting is very greedy

Have you read perlre and the Regex Tutorials? Or perhaps you were referring to something else entirely. If you were to post the specific excerpt or at the least be more specific with the regard to the problem, perhaps we can help.

What I did was take the information in the database and split the lines, ran them through a for loop and printed them to a temp file. So if the first line was 12|netscape, then I printed netscape 12 times in the temp file, if the second line was 10|microsoft, I printed it 10 times in the temp file, and recounted them and resorted them. This is never going to work when I get to number above 1000. What I would like to do is just sort the lines in the original database numerically, on the first field, but with out rewritting them, if that's possible.

Take the code and chop off everthing after EOT and see if you can sort the $logpath file numerically.

#!/perl/bin/perl -w

use CGI;

$q = new CGI;

for $key ( $q->param() ) { $form{$key} = $q->param($key); }

$logpath = "data/browser.dat";  

$browser = $form{'browser'};

open (LOG, "$logpath");
@data = <LOG>;
close(LOG);

$not_found = 1;

if($browser) { 
    open (LOG, ">$logpath");
    foreach $line(@data) {
        chomp($line);
        ($fcount,$fbrowser)= split(/\|/,$line);
        if ($fbrowser eq $browser) {
        $not_found = 0;
        $fcount = $fcount+1;
        print LOG "$fcount|$fbrowser\n";
        }
        else {
        print LOG "$line\n";
        }    
    }
    close(LOG);

    if($not_found) {
    open (LOG,">>$logpath");
    print LOG "1|$browser";
    close(LOG);
    }
}

# prints out log and form to browser

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

open (LOG, "$logpath");
@data = <LOG>;
close(LOG);

foreach $line(@data) {
chomp($line);
print "$line<br>";
}
close(LOG);

print <<EOT;
<FORM ACTION="basic.pl" METHOD="POST">
<SELECT NAME="browser">
    <OPTION VALUE="microsoft">microsoft</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="netscape">netscape</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="aol">aol</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="mozilla">mozilla</OPTION>
    <OPTION VALUE="opera">opera</OPTION>
    </SELECT>
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE="Submit">
</FORM>

EOT
[download]