I need some assistance again. I asked in the CB but it seemed like everyone had a different method of doing this and it seemed a lot more complicated than what could be described in the CB. I am NOT asking for source code, all I want is suggestions or places to look.

I am writing my version of the CB, my first problem is right now the script doesn't push off older messages, it'll post 1000 comments. How can I print only the latest 10 elements of a database? Databases are put together in the order they come in, right? If so, I won't need a timestamp, right?

Problem is I can't delete the older messages because I want to have a past history log of the past 24 hours. What exactly is a timestamp? I know how to find the localtime but I'm thinking a timestamp is something totally different (I already searched the wizard).

Ok, in short I want to know how I would get the latest 10 things from a database to print to the screen without deleting them because I want to have a past history, too.

Any suggestions but no real code would be very helpful. Thank you so much!

What I have so far is the basic system, you post your name and message and it saves to the DB.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

open( STDERR, ">>/home/sulfericacid/public_html/error.log" )
  or die "Cannot open error log, weird...an error opening an error log
+: $!";

use strict;
use warnings;
use POSIX;
use CGI qw/:standard/;

require SDBM_File;

my %chat;
my $chat = "list.dbm";
my $file = "iplog.txt";

tie %chat, 'SDBM_File', $chat, O_CREAT | O_RDWR, 0644;
if ( !tied %chat ) {
    print "database unsuccessful $!.\n";
}

print header, start_html;

print "<table>";
foreach ( keys(%chat) ) {
    print "<tr><td>";
    my ( $one, $two ) = split /::/, $chat{$_};
    print "<font color=blue>$one:</font> $two";
    print "</td></tr>";
}
print "</table>";

print start_form(), table(
    Tr(
        td("Name: "),
        td(
            textfield(
                -name => 'name',
                -size => 40
            )
        )
    ),
    Tr(
        td("Message: "),
        td(
            textfield(
                -name => 'message',
                -size => 150
            )
        )
    ),

    Tr( td(), td(submit) ),
  ),
  end_form(), hr();

if ( param() ) {
    my $name    = param('name');
    my $message = param('message');
    my $cnt;

    open( LOG, "$file" );
    $cnt = <LOG>;
    close(LOG);

    $cnt++;
    open( LOG, "> $file" );
    print LOG $cnt;
    close(LOG);

    my $info = join ( '::', $name, $message );

    $chat{$cnt} = $info;
}
[download]

"Age is nothing more than an inaccurate number bestowed upon us at birth as just another means for others to judge and classify us"

sulfericacid