Hello,

I have a conceptual question related to PERL. (My code is at the bottom of this post) I am very new to PERL so keep that in mind when you read this post & look at my code.

My goal is to create a website where a student can upload a file to a specific directory. There are 3 directories (one for each class). Within the class directories are folders for each of the 5 students. Within the student folders are 4 folders for assignments.

I realize I could write *MANY* "if" statements to say that if they chose a specific class, go to this directory... if it is a particular student, go to this directory... and if they selected a particular assigment, go to this directory. This method seems very cumbersome & inefficent, however.

I tried to change this line below so that the path the student uploads to will change depending on the values for the variables they entered. I tried this & could not get it to work.

$filename = "$HOME/classes/csc2010/laura/1/outputfile.txt";
As long as I tell it what class folder to go to(whether it's CSC2010, CSC3320 or CSC3410), it works- it opens a text file in that folder & prints the student id varialbe

to -->

$filename = "$HOME/classes/ $CSC/$studentid/$assignment/outputfile.txt";
But when I insert the variable representing the class folder, it does work- it does not open a text file in that class folder & print. I'm wondering if maybe there is something wrong with the $CSC variable. It prints out ok & I put chomp($CSC); in to take care of any whitespace. Is it not possible to put variables to resolve pathnames?

If you have any ideas, comments, suggestions, they are welcome.
Thanks-
Laura
lfindle@mindspring.com

My code is as follows:

************************************************** 
 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# 2010c.pl

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

# i realize i should probably be using CGI.pm library
# rather than using the below code to handle URL encoded 
# POST- that will be my next step

if ($ENV{"REQUEST_METHOD"} eq 'GET') { $buffer = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
+ }
else { read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'}); }

@pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);

foreach $pair (@pairs) {
 ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
 $value =~ tr/+/ /;
 $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
 $FORM{$name} = $value;
}

$studentid = $FORM{'studentid'};
$CSC = $FORM{'CSC'};
chomp($CSC);  
$assignment = $FORM{'assignment'};
$file = $FORM{'file'};

# here's the code I wrote that I'm having conceptual 
# problems with

if ($CSC eq "CSC2010") {
  if ($studentid eq "laura") {
     if ($assignment eq "1") {
     $HOME = (getpwnam("wfp51916"))[7];
 $filename = "$HOME/classes/csc2010/laura/1/outputfile.txt";
     open( OUTFILE, ">>$filename" ) or die ( "no go miss ");
     print OUTFILE "$studentid\n";
     close( OUTFILE );
     }
  }
}

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In reply to Using Variables in Path Names by lfindle

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