in reply to un-fiddled-with stock prices

Do a google search for "stock prices rss feed". Then you can use XML::RSS to get the feed and turn it into a hash, and do what you want with it. For an example see ztk-BBC-World-News-Rss-TickerTape.

Some people have already done stock retreival with LWP, see smtm and in the readmore, is a nifty little program written by someone. I've lost the author's name, but it generates graphs too. 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
#  e.g. if 'ibm' queried, script writes to files:  
#  ibm.html ibmdiff.jpg ibmlog.jpg ibm.csv  
# - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

# stock symbol lookup: http://finance.yahoo.com/l 
# e.g. aapl ko ibm msft rhat sunw 
my $stocksymbol = "rhat";
my $startdate = "4-15-2002";   # since it's for historical date, 
my $enddate = "6-30-2003";     # latest data may not be available 
my $interval = "d";   # d: daily, w: weekly, m: monthly 
my $agent = "Mozilla/4.0";   # your id sent to Yahoo Web server, enter
+ something 
my $q = quotes::get($stocksymbol, $startdate, $enddate, $interval, $ag
+ent);
my ($ma, $diff) = (20, 1);   # lags for MA & differencing 
open OUT, ">$stocksymbol.html";
print OUT chart::html($stocksymbol, $q, $ma, $diff);   # expecting hea
+ders: Date,Open,High,Low,Close,Volume 
close OUT;
print "done: $stocksymbol.html generated.\n";


{package quotes;
        use LWP::UserAgent;

        sub get {
                my ($symbol, $startdate, $enddate, $agent) = @_;
                print "fetching data...\n";
                my $dat = _fetch($symbol, $startdate, $enddate, $agent
+);   # csv file, 1st row = header 
                my @q = split /\n/, $dat;
                my @header = split /,/, shift @q;
                my %quotes = map { $_ => [] } @header;
                for my $q (@q) {
                        my @val = split ',', $q;
                        unshift @{$quotes{$header[$_]}}, $val[$_] for 
+0..$#val;   # unshift instead of push if data listed latest 1st & old
+est last 
                }
                open OUT, ">$symbol.csv";
                print OUT $dat;
                close OUT;
                print "data written to $symbol.csv.\n";
                return \%quotes;
        }
        sub _fetch {
                my ($symbol, $startdate, $enddate, $interval, $agent) 
+= @_;
                my $url = "http://chart.yahoo.com/table.csv?";
                my $freq = "g=$interval";    # d: daily, w: weekly, m:
+ monthly 
                my $stock = "s=$symbol";
                my @start = split '-', $startdate;
                my @end = split '-', $enddate;
                $startdate = "a=" . ($start[0]-1) . "&b=$start[1]&c=$s
+tart[2]";
                $enddate = "d=" . ($end[0]-1) . "&e=$end[1]&f=$end[2]"
+;
                $url .= "$startdate&$enddate&$stock&y=0&$freq&ignore=.
+csv";
                my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent(agent=>$agent);
                my $request = new HTTP::Request('GET',$url);
                my $response = $ua->request($request);
                if ($response->is_success) {
                        return $response->content;
                } else {
                        warn "Cannot fetch $url (status ", $response->
+code, " ", $response->message, ")\n";
                        return 0;
                }
        }
}
                
{package chart;
        use GD::Graph::lines;
        # my @headers = qw/ Date Open High Low Close Volume /; hardcod
+ed in _tbl() 
        # $q->{Close} assumed exists in plotlog() & plotdiff() 
        sub html {
                my ($stock, $q, $ma, $diff) = @_;
                print "generating html...\n";
                my $str = "";
                $str .= "<html><head><title>$stock</title></head><body
+ bgcolor=\"#00000\" text=\"ffffff\"><center>\n";
                $str .= "<p><img src=\"" . plotlog($stock, $q, $ma) . 
+"\"></p>\n";
                $str .= "<p><img src=\"" . plotdiff($stock, $q, $ma, $
+diff) . "\"></p>\n";
                $str .=  _tbl($stock, $q);
                $str .= "</center></body></html>\n";
                return $str;
        }

        sub plotlog {
                my ($stock, $q, $diff) = @_;
                my $img = $stock . "log.jpg";
                print "generating $img...\n";
                my ($s, $lines) = ([],[]);
                my $y_format = sub { sprintf " \$%.2f", exp $_[0] };

                $s = ts::logs($q->{Close});
                $lines->[0] = { name => 'Log of Closing Price', color 
+=> 'marine', data => $s };
                $lines->[1] = { name => "MA($diff) (Moving Avg)", colo
+r => 'cyan', data => ts::ma($lines->[0]->{data}, $diff) };
                
                plotlines($img, $stock, $q->{Date}, $lines, $y_format)
+;

                return $img;
        }
        sub plotdiff {
                my ($stock, $q, $lag, $diff) = @_;
                my $img = $stock . "diff.jpg";
                print "generating $img...\n";
                my ($s, $lines) = ([],[]);
                my $y_format = sub { sprintf "  %.2f", $_[0] };

                $s = ts::logs($q->{Close});
                $lines->[0] = { name => "Diff($diff)", color => 'marin
+e', data => ts::diff($s, $diff) };
                $lines->[1] = { name => "MA($lag) (Moving Avg)", color
+ => 'cyan', data => ts::ma($lines->[0]->{data}, $lag) };
                $s = ts::stdev($lines->[0]->{data}, $lag);
                $s = ts::nstdev_ma($s, $lines->[1]->{data}, 2);
                $lines->[2] = { name => 'MA + 2 Std Dev', color => 'lr
+ed', data => $s->[0] };
                $lines->[3] = { name => 'MA - 2 Std Dev', color => 'lr
+ed', data => $s->[1] };

                plotlines($img, $stock, $q->{Date}, $lines, $y_format)
+;

                return $img;
        }

        sub plotlines {
                my ($file, $stock, $x, $lines, $y_format) = @_;
                my @legend;
                my ($data, $colors) = ([], []);

                $data->[0] = $x;   # x-axis labels 

                for (0..$#{$lines}) {
                        $data->[(1+$_)] = $lines->[$_]->{data};
                        $colors->[$_] = $lines->[$_]->{color};
                        $legend[$_] = $lines->[$_]->{name};
                }
                
                my $graph = GD::Graph::lines->new(740,420);
                $graph->set (dclrs => $colors) or die $graph->error;
                $graph->set_legend(@legend) or die $graph->error;
                $graph->set (legend_placement => 'BC') or die $graph->
+error;
                $graph->set(y_number_format => $y_format) if $y_format
+;
                $graph->set (
                        title => "stock: $stock",
                        boxclr => 'black',
                        bgclr => 'dgray',
                        axislabelclr => 'white',
                        legendclr => 'white',
                        textclr => 'white',
                        r_margin => 20,
                        tick_length => -4,
                        y_long_ticks => 1,
                        axis_space => 10,
                        x_labels_vertical => 1,
                        x_label_skip => int(0.2*scalar(@{$data->[0]}))
                ) or die $graph->error;
                my $gd = $graph->plot($data) or die $graph->error;

                open (IMG, ">$file") or die $!;
                binmode IMG;
                print IMG $gd->jpeg(90);

                return 1;
        }

        sub _tbl {
                my ($stock, $q) = @_;
                my $str = "";
                my @headers = qw/ Date Open High Low Close Volume /;
                my $tr_start = "<tr align=\"center\">\n";
                $str .= "<table border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"3\" cellspa
+cing=\"0\">\n";
                $str .= $tr_start . "<td colspan=\"" . scalar @headers
+ . "\">";
                $str .= "<b>Stock: $stock</b></td></tr>\n";
                $str .= $tr_start;
                $str .= "<td><b>" . $headers[$_] . "</b></td>\n" for 0
+..$#headers;
                $str .= "</tr>\n";
                for my $i (reverse 0..$#{$q->{Date}}) {
                        $str .= $tr_start;
                        $str .= "<td>" . $q->{$headers[$_]}->[$i] . "<
+/td>\n" for 0..$#headers;
                        $str .= "</tr>\n";
                }
                $str .= "</table>\n";
                return $str;
        }
}

{package ts;
        sub logs {
                my $s = shift;
                return [ map {log} @{$s}[0..$#{$s}] ];
        }

        sub diff {
                my ($series, $lag) = @_;
                my @diff = map {undef} 1..$lag;
                push @diff, $series->[$_] - $series->[$_-$lag] for ( $
+lag..$#{$series} );
                return \@diff;
        }

       sub ma {
                my ($series, $lag) = @_;
                my @ma = map {undef} 1..$lag;
                for(@{$series}){unless($_){push @ma,undef}else{last}}
                my $sum = 0;
                for my $i ($#ma..$#{$series}) {
                        $sum += $series->[$i-$_] for (0..($lag-1));
                        push @ma, $sum/($lag);
                        $sum = 0;
                }
                return \@ma;
        }

        sub stdev {
                my ($series, $lag) = @_;
                my @stdev = map {undef} 1..$lag;
                for(@{$series}){unless($_){push @stdev,undef}else{last
+}}
                my ($sum, $sum2) = (0, 0);
                for my $i ($#stdev..$#{$series}) {
                        for (0..($lag-1)) {
                                $sum2 += ($series->[$i-$_])**2;
                                $sum += $series->[$i-$_] ;
                        }
                        push @stdev, ($sum2/$lag - ($sum/$lag)**2)**0.
+5;
                        ($sum, $sum2) = (0, 0);
                }
                return \@stdev;
        }

        sub nstdev_ma{
                my ($sd, $ma, $n) = @_;
                my $ans=[[],[]];
                for (0..$#{$sd}) {
                        my $yn = defined $sd->[$_] && defined $ma->[$_
+];
                        $ans->[0][$_] = $yn ? $ma->[$_] + $n*($sd->[$_
+]) : undef;
                        $ans->[1][$_] = $yn ? $ma->[$_] - $n*($sd->[$_
+]) : undef;
                }
                return $ans;
        }
}

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I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom