in reply to Critique my First Script for me?

You're using the CGI OO interface, so why use CGI qw/:standard/;?
//////* Open up your copy of CGI.pm, and take a look at :standard 
        ':html2'=>['h1'..'h6',qw/p br hr ol ul li dl dt dd menu code v
+ar strong em
               tt u i b blockquote pre img a address cite samp dfn htm
+l head
               base body Link nextid title meta kbd start_html end_htm
+l
               input Select option comment charset escapeHTML/],
        ':html3'=>[qw/div table caption th td TR Tr sup Sub strike app
+let Param 
               embed basefont style span layer ilayer font frameset fr
+ame script small big/],
        ':form'=>[qw/textfield textarea filefield password_field hidde
+n checkbox checkbox_group 
              submit reset defaults radio_group popup_menu button auto
+Escape
              scrolling_list image_button start_form end_form startfor
+m endform
              start_multipart_form end_multipart_form isindex tmpFileN
+ame uploadInfo URL_ENCODED MULTIPART/],
        ':cgi'=>[qw/param upload path_info path_translated url self_ur
+l script_name cookie Dump
             raw_cookie request_method query_string Accept user_agent 
+remote_host content_type
             remote_addr referer server_name server_software server_po
+rt server_protocol
             virtual_host remote_ident auth_type http
             save_parameters restore_parameters param_fetch
             remote_user user_name header redirect import_names put 
             Delete Delete_all url_param cgi_error/],
        ':standard' => [qw/:html2 :html3 :form :cgi/],

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That's a lot isn't it, and you're only using param (wasteful). You should either use CGI qw/param/; (not reccommended), or change your map hash builder to use $q->param(... instead of just param(... (also not reccommended). Or, and this is reccomended, just call Vars like i mention below (ala my %FORM = $q->Vars();. *////////

You should also turn on taint ( #!perl -wT...)
* look for the cgi security stuff in perlfaq or search the site for taint checking (or visit Ovids homenode) for more info

What do you think $words = <TEXTFILE>; accomplishes? That will get a single line out the handle, is that what you want?

What's this? 

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
        print "<HTML> \n";
        print "<body bgcolor=000000 text=99CCCC> \n";

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You got CGI, use it (print $q->header(),$q->start_html()....).

open (TEXTFILE,"$path_to_text") || die "where's the damn file? : $!" is pretty good, but || die "where's the hell is $path_to_text? : $!" is better.

It is also a good idea, to use CGI 2.73; #version, cause you never know.

Also, the way you build you %FORM is clever, but CGI (modern versions, not ancient), have a Vars method that will do that for you, and considerably (%50+) quicker (cause it doesn't call param a million times).

* - updates made

 
___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________
Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"

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Re: (crazyinsomniac) Re: Critique my First Script for me?
by jerrygarciuh (Curate) on Sep 22, 2001 at 02:05 UTC
    The %FORM was contributed by Ovid during my search engine research, the use CGI qw/:standard/; is left over from that, I thought it was invoking CGI.
    I will make a point of rereading some of my CGI books now that my code knowledge is growing, I was reading them first when I found I needed to learn Perl to make any sense of them.

    I don't understand several of your questions and this will make them excellent points on which I may build knowledge. Thanks again crazyinsomniac!
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      the use CGI qw/:standard/; is left over from that, I thought it was invoking CGI.

      use CGI; is all you need if you are using the OO interface (that's when you do my $q = CGI->new;). The 'qw/:standard/' part imports function names so that you don't need the $q variable and lets you, e.g., say 'param($field)' instead of '$q->param($field)', which makes it a little more of a hassle, but I don't like to import anything I don't have to, and sometimes you might need to create more than one CGI object, and so in that case the OO way is the only way to go.

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        sometimes you might need to create more than one CGI object

        I like and use the OO interface too, and I've heard the above statement before... Have you ever actually needed to create more than one CGI object? I don't believe I've *ever* seen anything like: 

        my $q1 = CGI->new;
my $q2 = CGI->new;

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        Have you?

        -Blake

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Re: (crazyinsomniac) Re: Critique my First Script for me?
by jerrygarciuh (Curate) on Sep 23, 2001 at 22:00 UTC
    CI, About using use CGI qw/:standard/; while using CGI OO interface: When I don't use it the bit Ovid gave me won't work:
    my %FORM = map { $_, @{[ param($_) ]} > 1 ? [ param($_) ] : param($_) 
} param();

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    presumably because it is written in the function-oriented style (?correct?). I have been reading perlman:lib:CGI and I am attempting to get my head around how the line does its thing. Maybe I will attempt an OO rewrite of it soon.
    Peace.
    jg
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