Alright. I have to admit at this point that you were absolutely right about not posting!

That being said, I like writing in "natural text" and I'll work on a rewrite that will do something to convert that to paragraphs instead of breaks.

"For fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good." - Plato / Socrates

This is by no means perfect, but it's a step up from your original code.

#!/usr/bin/perl -T

use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw(:standard);

print header,
   start_html('PM Poster'),
   start_form,
   textarea('post',undef,8,30),
   submit('go'),
   end_form,
;

if (param('go')) {
   for (split /\s*\n(?:\s*\n)(?!.*\n*<\/code>)+/, param('post')) {
      $_ =~ s/<(\/?)code>/<$1tt><$1pre>/g;
      print p($_),"\n";
   }
}

print end_html;

__END__
lines of source: 29 (including __END__ block)
empty lines: 5
commenting (shebang to be considered code): 6
lines containing only "}" or ";": 3
lines of code: 10 (first print is really only 1 line)
[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)

I've returned to this post at the close of my semester in college.

I've read through a book on CGI/Perl that was an introductory book, as well as through the first chapter and a bit of Programming Perl. Because I don't have too much reading under my belt, the code for this is a little sloppy.

I rewrote the script (even after Jeffa posted a good one) for two reasons: One, that I didn't understand Jeffa's script, and Two, that it's important that the script output as text/plain, so that it will be easy to cut and paste into the post window (otherwise the paragraph tags disappear). I made sure to take out the break tags, too!

It would have been nice, if the following line worked (which would have made my code a lot simpler):

split /\n{2,}/, $inputed_text;

However, that doesn't work, hence the messy code for determining what a paragraph is:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI qw(:standard -debug);

# Perlmonks.org Poster, by David Caughell, grasp_the_sun@yahoo.co.uk
# Converts simple text into text that can be cut and paste into PM pos
+ts

print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";

my $text = param('FPost');
my @sections = split('code'.'>', $text);

# get rid of leftovers from code tags
for (@sections) {
    chop if /\/$/;
    chop if /<$/;
}

for (0 .. $#sections) {
    unless ($_ % 2) {
        my @lines = split /\n/, $sections[$_];
        my @paragraphs = ('');

        for (@lines) {
            if (length $_ <= 1) {
                push(@paragraphs,'') 
                  if length($paragraphs[$#paragraphs]);
            }
            $paragraphs[$#paragraphs] .= $_ if length $_ > 1;
        }
        pop(@paragraphs) unless length $paragraphs[$#paragraphs];

        print "<P>\n$_\n</P>\n\n" for @paragraphs;
    }
    else {
        print '<code'.">\n$sections[$_]</code".">\n\n";
    }
}
[download]

Dave.

$scratchpad_public = 0 unless $scratchpad;

It would have been nice, if the following line worked (which would have made my code a lot simpler):

split /\n{2,}/, $inputed_text;
[download]

I find that letting invisible spaces be significant causes lots of problems. This is one of them. Try:

split /([^\S\n]*\n){2,}/, $input;
[download]

It won't be defeated by trailing white-space (which is usually "invisible"), including cases of "\r\n", which you'll find is very common in multi-line text sent via HTTP (because that is what the standard says you are supposed to send, I believe).

Note that [^\S\n] means 'any character that is not non-white-space nor "\n"', which can be reworded more clearly as 'any character that *is* white-space other than "\n"', which is a good way to match trailing white-space without risking sucking in the final "\n".

                - tye

("input" is not a verb so I refuse to write "inputted" much less "inputed")