I often use MSIE to browse the web on my NT box, and every so often I add a link to my "Favorites" bar. Now the list has gotten rather long and unweildy and so I said to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a page with these links as my start page?" Well... it would. So I wrote this hack of a script to read my favorites and generate a page, which I then set as my start page.

Now I just need to figure out how to make it run automatically when I add links to my favorites. 

#!perl -w
use strict;

my $file = "Link.html"; # File to generate.
my $lcolor = "#C0C0C0"; # Color for links.

my %links;
for( <*.url> )
{
    my $link = `type "$_"` or die "$^E";
    die "System Error! $?\n\$!=$!\n\$^E=$^E\n\t " if 0 != $? >> 8;
    die "Unusual link, '$link'\n" unless $link =~ s/^
         (\[DEFAULT\]\nBASE|\[InternetShortcut\]\n)
         URL=([^\n]+) # This is the URL for the link.
         \n.*$/$2/sx;
    $links{+substr($_,0,-4)} = $link;
}

my @linkName = reverse sort keys %links;
my @linkURL = @links{@linkName};

warn "Replacing $file!\n" and sleep 3 if -e $file;
open FILE, "> $file" or die "Unable to open $file!\n\$!=$!\n\$^E=$^E\n
+\t ";
print FILE "<HTML>\n<HEAD><TITLE>Favorite Links</TITLE></HEAD>\n",
           "<BODY bgcolor=#000000 link=$lcolor alink=$lcolor vlink=$lc
+olor>\n",
           "<CENTER><B><TABLE WIDTH=100%>\n" 
           or die "Print Failed!\n\$!=$!\n\$^E=$^E\n\t ";
print FILE "<TR><TD><A HREF=\"", pop( @linkURL ), "\">", pop( @linkNam
+e ),
           ( @linkURL ? ( "</A></TD>\n<TD><A HREF=\"", pop( @linkURL )
+, "\">", 
                          pop( @linkName ) ) : "&nbsp;" ),
           "</A></TD></TR>\n"
           or die "Print Failed!\n\$!=$!\n\$^E=$^E\n\t " while @linkUR
+L;
print FILE "</TABLE>\n</BODY>\n</HTML>\n"
           or die "Print Failed!\n\$!=$!\n\$^E=$^E\n\t ";
close FILE or die "Close Failed!\n\$!=$!\n\$^E=$^E\n\t ";

######################################################################
+#########
INIT { die "Intended for use on MSWin32 system.\n" unless 'MSWin32' eq
+ $^O }

=head1 Usage

Open a command window on your MSWin32 and change directories to 
Your Favorites\Links\ directory. On my NT box this was:

C:\WINNT\Profiles\Adam\Favorites\Links\

Run this script. 
You will now have a file called Links.html which makes for an excellen
+t
start page.

=head1 Author

Adam
www.perlmonks.org

=cut

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