felwick has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

last nights' code help worked beautifully... 
my @array = ("AOL", "Yahoo", "Ask Jeeves/Ask.com", "Alltheweb", "Alta 
+Vista", "Lycos", "iWon", "Teoma", "Wisenut", "MSN", "Netscape", "Info
+space", "Looksmart");
shuffle(@array);

my ($comp1, $comp2, $comp3, $comp4, $comp5) = @array[0..4];

print qq~
<input type="hidden" name="comp1" value="$comp1">
<input type="hidden" name="comp2" value="$comp2">
<input type="hidden" name="comp3" value="$comp3">
<input type="hidden" name="comp4" value="$comp4">
<input type="hidden" name="comp5" value="$comp5">
~;

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in the next sub however, instead of hardcoding the @array values, i need to get the value of 15 form elements. when i use the following:

my @array= param('aware02', 'aware03', 'aware04', 'aware05', 'aware06'
+, 'aware07', 'aware08', 'aware09', 'aware10', 'aware11', 'aware12', '
+aware13', 'aware14');

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i get the param name - not the value. what am i doing wrong?!

thanks again...

felwick

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: random array - a newer twist
by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Nov 05, 2002 at 22:39 UTC

    You are misusing &CGI::param. I believe your usage sets the value of the 'aware02' field to an array of the remaining arguments and returns that array to @array.

    Here's how to do what you want:

    my @array= map {[param($_)]} (
                 'aware02', 'aware03', 'aware04',
                 'aware05', 'aware06', 'aware07',
                 'aware08', 'aware09', 'aware10',
                 'aware11', 'aware12', 'aware13',
                 'aware14');

    [download]

    The square brackets are in the map block to take care of any multiple valued fields. You'll need to dereference the array elements to get their values.

    After Compline,
    Zaxo

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[d/l]
      zaxo - thanks for the quick response....i'm new to CGIpm and have been coding since about 7pm last nite - aka, i'm braindead right now.

      what i'm getting back now is 

      <input type="hidden" name="comp1" value="ARRAY(0x102392d4)">
<input type="hidden" name="comp2" value="ARRAY(0x10239388)">
<input type="hidden" name="comp3" value="ARRAY(0x102392ec)">
<input type="hidden" name="comp4" value="ARRAY(0x10237080)">
<input type="hidden" name="comp5" value="ARRAY(0x1023931c)">

      [download]
      how do i make this mean something?

      thanks, felwick

[reply]
[d/l]

        That's what I was talking about with 'dereferencing'. Either leave out the square brackets in the map block (if there are no multivalued fields) or else wrap the values you print in '@{}' to dereference them. The References quick reference tutorial by tye may help you a lot.

        You may want to think of other data structures to use. A hash of values keyed by field names is often natural for cgi form data.

        After Compline,
        Zaxo

[reply]

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