Looks pretty good, though your counter has a race condition in it....

Consider two people hitting this code at almost the same time. Since the code is being multitasked, it is possible that one script will zero out the counter right before the next one reads it... Something like:

A: read counter Data: linux:700 windows:6 A: zero out counter Data: -------------------- B: read counter Data: linux:0 windows:0 A: write out counter Data: linux:701 windows:6 B: zero out counter Data: -------------------- B: write counter Data: linux:1 windows:0 <-- Doh!
See File Locking for a tutorial on using flock to avoid this.

-Blake


In reply to Re: Advice on a CGI script by blakem
in thread Advice on a CGI script by TStanley

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.