they're using phpBB which stores said user info in a mySQL database, which i have no experience with or knowledge about...

Well, I don't know what phpBB is, but in order to talk to a mySQL database, I suggest you use DBI along with the proper DBD (database driver) for this.

You can install the required software by doing the commands below (note that you may need super user privileges):

bash-2.05a# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "DBI"'
bash-2.05a# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Bundle::DBD::mysql"'

The book Programming the Perl DBI might be a very useful resource if you have the time and the money.

how could i easily get this user info and format it into either a hash or flat text file (whichever's easier)?

Your code would be somewhat similar to this untested example...

use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $login, $password, { RaiseError => 1 } );
my $sth = $dbh->prepare('/* some adequate SQL query */');

o
o
o

$sth->execute($user);
my $r_udata = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref;
$sth->finish;

# $r_udata is a reference to an array where each element matches
# the corresponding column on the query passed to ->prepare()

o
o
o

$dbh->disconnect;
[download]

Please make sure to use placeholders when building your query. You can post more specific questions once you start coding.

Best regards

-lem, but some call me fokat

since i've recently been doing lot's of db stuff lately (for me anyway) and you seem to have little db/SQL experience at all... i'd say skip to the next level up and use Class::DBI which sits atop Ima::DBI and DBI and does alot of work for you.

assuming...

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

# a database          - 'phpbbdb'
# a database user     - 'dbuser'
# a database password - 'dbpass'
# a table             - 'passwords'
#
# mysql> describe passwords;
# +--------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
# | Field  | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra # |
# +--------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
# | user   | varchar(16)  |      | PRI |         |       # |
# | passwd | varchar(128) | YES  |     | NULL    |       # |
# +--------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
#
# mysql> select * from passwords;
# +-------+------------+
# | user  | passwd     |
# +-------+------------+
# | walla | washington |
# +-------+------------+

package MyDB;
use base 'Class::DBI';

MyDB->set_db( 'Main',
    'dbi:mysql:database=phpbbdb',
    'dbuser', 'dbpass' );


package MyPasswords;
use base 'MyDB';

MyPasswords->table( 'passwords' );
MyPasswords->columns( All => qw/ user passwd / );


package main;

die << "_USAGE_" unless @ARGV;
Usage: $0 <username> [<username> ...]

Display the password(s) for username(s)!

_USAGE_

foreach my $user (@ARGV) {
  my $info = MyPasswords->retrieve( $user );
  printf "user: %s password: %s$/", $info->user(), $info->passwd();
}

exit;
[download]

and a little test

$ test.pl walla
user: walla password: washington
$

Update/Addendum: the users will really hate it if they end up having to login twice. phpBB may be using cookies for session management, and may store some of that info in the database as well. it would be ideal if your script could arrange to have the cookie passed to it as well and use the cookie contents and a database query to allow access instead of asking for username/password again.

but...how do i use it? like i said, i have no experience with mysql

jues pull up the docs for the modules i mentioned. they're all on CPAN.