Hello,

Hello, I come from a Computer Science background have have done a small amount of programming in my time (Mostly C, Pascal, Fortran, ADA, etc..) A couple of years ago I took a Perl class from Sun to help with some utilities I was writing and have loved it ever since!

I recently read Randal L. Schwartz's article in Linux Magazine regarding a "repackaging of data" challenge that was put forth by the folks here at the Perl Monestary. I took Randal's code and modified it to throw the information into a Java "Ticker tape" applet.

I have realized over the last couple years that there are quite a few different ways to do things in perl (to say the least). I was wondering if there were any kind souls in attendence that would like to look over my code and offer some positive feedback / criticizm. I would like to pick up on good technique and possibly learn some new tricks in the process. Here's the Code 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
   use strict;
   $|++;

   use LWP::Simple qw(mirror);
   use CGI qw(:all -no_debug col thead tbody);
   use HTML_TAGS;
   use Getopt::Long;

   my $CNN_URL = "http://headlinenews.cnn.com/QUICKNEWS/virtual/swf.he
+adline.txt";
   my $CNN_CACHE = "contest.cnn-cache"; # flat file
   my $DB_MEMORY = "contest.memory"; # dbmopen

  {
    my $s = mirror($CNN_URL, $CNN_CACHE);
    last if $s == 200;     # we got new data
    last if $s == 304;     # no new data, but we have to expire things
    die "status is $s, aborting\n";
  }

  GetOptions(
             "refresh=i" => \ (my $REFRESH = 10),    # meta refresh ti
+me in minutes
              "output=s" => \ (my $OUTPUT = "/usr/local/apache/htdocs/
+headlines.html"),    # output file
              "expire=i"=> \(my$EXPIRE= 15),         # expire time in 
+minutes (Originally 1440)
              "clear!" => \ (my $CLEAR = 0),         # clear the cache
              "<>" => sub { $Getopt::Long::error++; warn "Unknown arg:
+ $_[0]\n" },
  ) or die "see code for usage\n";

  dbmopen(my %DB, $DB_MEMORY, 0644) or die "Cannot dbmopen $DB_MEMORY:
+ $!";
  open STDIN, $CNN_CACHE or die "Cannot open $CNN_CACHE: $!";
  open STDOUT, ">$OUTPUT" or die "Cannot create $OUTPUT~: $!";

%DB=()if $CLEAR;

$CGI::Q = CGI->new(\*STDIN) or die "Cannot parse $CNN_CACHE\n";

for (my $i = 1; my $headline = param("headline$i"); $i++) {
     my $state = param("state$i");
     my $key = "$state\n$headline";
     if (defined $DB{$key}) {      # just update modtime
        $DB{$key} =~ s/\s\d+/" " . time/e;
     } else {     # add the entry
        $DB{$key} = time . " " . time;
     }
  }

for my $key (keys %DB)
  {
    delete $DB{$key} if $DB{$key} =~/\s(\d+)/ and $1 < time - $EXPIRE 
+* 60;
  }

print start_html(-title => "Thunderheart --  Brought to you in Ronovis
+ion!",
                head => meta({-http_equiv => 'refresh',
                -content => $REFRESH*60}));

print <<'HTML';
<BODY BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF>

<TABLE CELLPADDING=3 width="100%" BGCOLOR=4040A0>
<TR><TH class="tit">
        <FONT SIZE="+2" class="tit" COLOR=D0F0FF>Thunderheart</FONT>
</TH></TR></TABLE>
<CENTER>

<CENTER><FONT SIZE=+1 COLOR=000000>Current Headlines from
<A HREF=http://www.cnn.com>CNN.com</A></FONT></CENTER>

<TD>
<applet codebase="./" code="aTicker.class" archive="aTicker.jar" width
+=880 height=20 MAYSCRIPT>
        <param name="_file" value="./mess.txt">
        <param name="file" value="s">
        <param name="cSep" value=";">
        <param name="speed" value="2">
        <param name="delay" value="30">
        <param name="local" value="true">
        <param name="bgcolor" value="13693183">
        <param name="Font1" value="Verdana, 14, 0, 0">
        <param name="Font2" value="Verdana, 14, 1, 1220">
HTML

my $count = 0;
while ((my $key, my $value) = each(%DB))
  {

    (my $title, my $headline) = split(/\n/,$key);
    print "<param name=\"s$count\" value=\"...$headline...\ ; http://w
+ww.cnn.com ; _load\">\n";
    $count++;

  }

print <<'APPLET';
</applet>
APPLET

print end_html;

close STDOUT;

exit 0;

sub escapeHTMLnobreak
  {
    local $_ = escapeHTML("@_");
    s/ / /g;
    $_;
  }

[download]
Any "positive" criticism would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rostiguy@ostiguynet.com

In reply to Code Critique? by rostiguy

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