Sorry that this is so long-winded but I am at one of those hallowed early stumbling blocks when learning a new language. I am looking to develop a baseball web site eventually. I was doing great in my research jumping from excel to xml to mysql but then I ran into programming languages and I'm now getting my ass kicked.

Below is the exact script taken out of a Safari book called Baseball Hacks. As opposed to going through the Perl documentation, I am hoping to work off of examples like this one, tweaking them to my needs, and referring to the documentation as I need it. I just can't get this script to work so I am stuck in even beginning that process.

The script below should extract data from the mlb.com site found about halfway down through the code and load it into a mysql database (already created) with the help of other files (such as save_to_db which you will see in the script).

The issue is that I run the script and just get another command line. There is no error. When I run it under ModPerl, I just get a blank white screen. I checked the error log and nothing appears when I execute this. I have run a number of small sample scripts that I have taken from various tutorials with success. This is the first complex one with which I have worked (and note that I did change the user and pass here for safety). And I realize that I went from the wading pool to the deep end with this.

Q1 part I: Whether or not the issue raised in part 2 is the problem, how does one diagnose this without an actual error message? Or maybe a better question is what it means when I execute a script and immediately just get the command line prompt again.

Q1 part II: I'm wondering if I need to pre-set directories. With 'use,' does the call item always have to be in the same folder? Do I need to set a directory for each call item (ex: Mysql, line 10- mysql is in a different directory than the script) before writing that kind of code? I've read a little bit about @INC but haven't delved deeply yet.

Question 2: I realize this is a reach so don't struggle to answer it but any other clues as to how I might get this to run successfully?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; 
use warnings;

    # loads a database with this season's box scores up through yester
+day's games

    use save_to_db;

    use Mysql;
    my $dbh = Mysql->connect('localhost', 'boxes', 'username', 'passwo
+rd');
    $dbh->{'dbh'}->{'PrintError'} = 1;
    use XML::Simple;
    my $xs = new XML::Simple(ForceArray => 1, KeepRoot => 1, KeyAttr =
+> 'boxscore');
    use LWP;
    my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;

    # to prevent partial loading of games in progress, only load a day
+'s games
    # after 12:00 PM GMT
    use Time::Local;
    my $mintime = timegm(0,0,0,3,3,105);
    my $maxtime = time() - 60*60*36;
    my $mintimestr = gmtime(timegm(0,0,0,3,3,105));
    my $maxtimestr = gmtime(time() - 60*60*36);

    print "iterating from $mintimestr to $maxtimestr\n";
    for ($i = $mintime; $i <= $maxtime; $i += 86400) {
       ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = gmtime(
+$i);
       $fmon = length($mon + 1) == 1 ? '0' . ($mon + 1) : ($mon + 1);
       $fday = length($mday) == 1 ?  '0' . $mday : $mday;

       # build base url for fetching box scores and start fetching
       $baseurl = 'http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_' . (19
+00 +
         $year) .
         '/month_' . $fmon .
         '/day_' . $fday . '/';

        my $response = $browser->get($baseurl);
        die "Couldn't get $baseurl: ", $response->status_line, "\n"
           unless $response->is_success;
        my $dirhtml = $response->content;
      while($dirhtml =~ m/<a href=\"(gid_.+)\/\"/g ) {
        my $game = $1;
        print "fetching box score for game $game\n";
        my $boxurl = $baseurl . $game . "/boxscore.xml";
        my $response = $browser->get($boxurl);
        # die "Couldn't get $boxurl: ", $response->status_line, "\n"
        unless ($response->is_success) {
          print "Couldn't get $boxurl: ", $response->status_line, "\n"
+;
          next;
        }
        my $box = $xs->XMLin($response->content);
        save_batting_and_fielding($dbh, $box);
        save_pitching($dbh, $box);
        save_game($dbh, $box);

        my $playersurl = $baseurl . $game . "/players.txt";
        my $response = $browser->get($playersurl);
        unless ($response->is_success) {
          print "Couldn't get $playersurl: ", $response->status_line,
          "\  n";
          next;
        }
        save_roster($dbh, $box, $response->content);
      }
      # be a good spider and don't take up too much bandwidth
      sleep(1);
    }
[download]

I'm on a Windows XP machine. The command line that I use to run the script is perl load_db.pl. When I run it, I know I am in the correct directory where all of the scripts involved are located. I have no idea how it figures out where mysql is but I don't get an error. When I run perl -v, I get a description about Perl 5.8.8. When I run the second message, I get this: _to_db::VERSION Thanks for your help, Adam