feed it a word, and it spits back the definition.
sub getWord {
  my ($word) = @_;
  my $content = get("http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=$w
+ord");

  if ($content =~ /<!-- resultItemStart -->/) {
    my @content = '200';
    my $temp;
    while ($content =~ /<!-- resultItemStart -->/) {
      $content =~ s/.*?<!-- resultItemStart -->(.*?)<!-- resultItemEnd
+ -->//s;
      $temp = $1;
      while ($temp =~ /<(li|dd).*>.*<\/\1>/is) {
        $temp =~ s#.*?<(li|dd).*?>(.*?)</\1>##is;
        $_ = $2;
        s/(<.*?>|\&.*?\;)//sg;
        s/^\s+(.*)\s+$/$1/;
        push(@content, $_);
      }
    }
    return @content;
  } elsif ($content =~ /<!-- resultListStart -->/) {
    ($content) = $content =~ /<!-- resultListStart -->(.*?)<!-- result
+ListEnd -->/s;
    $content =~ s/<.*?>//gs;
    $content =~ s/^.*?Suggestions:\s+(.*?)\n\n.*$/$1/s;
    my @content = split(/\n/, $content);
    unshift(@content, '404');
    return @content;
  } else {
    return undef;
  }
}

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
•Re: Grab Dictionary.com Definition
by merlyn (Sage) on Aug 17, 2002 at 06:57 UTC
[reply]
(jeffa) Re: Grab Dictionary.com Definition
by jeffa (Bishop) on Aug 17, 2002 at 15:00 UTC
    Not bad ... here is the one that i reinvented (before i discovered Net::Dict - merlyn++ yet again): 
    use strict;

use POSIX;
use LWP::Simple;

my $html = get('http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=' . shift);

my ($def) = $html =~ /<!-- Content -->(.*)<!-- End content -->/s;
$def =~ s/(<\/table>(?!.*<\/table>)).*$/$1/sg;

print html2text($def);

sub html2text {
   my $html = shift;
   my $tmp_file = tmpnam() . '.html';
   open(FH,'>',$tmp_file) || die $!;
   print FH $html;
   close FH;

   my $text = `lynx -dump $tmp_file`;
   $text =~ s/References\n.*//s;
   unlink $tmp_file;
   return $text;
}

    [download]

    jeffa

    L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)
[reply]
[d/l]

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