This could be a bother to write in any other language, but Perl makes it so easy that it would be silly not to build it. It is a simple tool.
It does only this: Grab the web page containing the load stats on the login machines at my university. Select the server with lowest load and launch ssh.
I for one feel taht this is the biggest use for Perl. Those small nice hacks that just make life a bit... smoother. Imagine how long this little widget would be written in any other language.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
if ( $#ARGV != 0 ) {
 print "efd v1.0 by d99msr\n";
 print "Usage:\n";
 print "        efd username\n";
 exit;
}
my $user = $ARGV[0];
use HTTP::Request::Common;
use LWP::UserAgent;
print "Retrieving and parsing load average stats.\n";
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $req = GET 'http://www.efd.lth.se/loginload.shtml';
my @raw = split("\n", $ua->request($req)->as_string);
my $lowest = 10;
my $machine;
foreach (@raw) {
 if ( $_ =~ m/TR.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TD.*TR/)
+ {
  $_ =~ s/\<.*?\>\<.*?\>/\<\>/ig;
  $_ =~ s/ //g;
  @split = split("<>", $_);
  if ( $split[5] < $lowest ) {
   $lowest = $split[5];
   $machine = $split[1];
  }
 }
}
print "Connecting to $machine, load average: $lowest\n";
my $efdname = "$user\@$machine.efd.lth.se";
exec("ssh $efdname");
exit;

[download]


Odie

--
I am a manual signature virus. Copy me please!

In reply to Nothing special. Isn't that what Perls all about? by odie

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.