Here's my suggestion; whether it's an improvement or not I'll leave up to the judgement of the XP meter :)

Where you have: 

    my $onlyonce = 1;
    foreach my $tempword ( @words )
    {
        if ( $onlyonce == 1 )
        {
            $searchstring .= "MajorDescription LIKE '%$tempword%' OR M
+ajorName LIKE '%$tempword%'";
            $onlyonce = 0;
        }
        else
        {
            $searchstring .= " OR MajorDescription LIKE '%$tempword%' 
+OR MajorName LIKE '%$tempword%
+'";
        }
    }

[download]
Having "almost" the same SQL code in 2 branches of an if is very hard to maintain or debug correctly, in my opinion.

Why not replace all of that with: 

    $searchstring=join " OR ",
                  map "MajorDescription LIKE '\%$_\%' OR MajorName LIK
+E '\%$_\%'",
                  @words;

[download]
join and map sometimes scare folks, but I think that's more readable and less fragile than your structure.

If you don't like join/map, may I suggest this alternative? 

    my $or="";
    foreach my $tempword ( @words )
    {
        $searchstring .= " $or MajorDescription LIKE '%$tempword%' OR 
+MajorName LIKE '%$tempword%'";
        # only set this once
        $or="OR" unless $or;
    }

[download]

--
Mike

In reply to Re: Search engine code critique by RMGir
in thread Search engine code critique by ruhk

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