Giving text box a hidden value

SysAdm has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Alright... I have a search form and I need the text box where the user types in a 'keyword' to default to a value of "any character"... this way if the user doesn't type anything in the text box it will still search for any character... Here is a piece of the code I am currently using...

<input type="text" name="searchstring" size="18">

if ($desc =~ /$form{'searchstring'}/i) {
[download]

The $desc variable is where the code will search the data... I'm thinking I need something like this

$form{'searchstring'}/i = [a-zA-Z] 
  else $desc =~ /$form{'searchstring'}/i
[download]

But that doesn't seem to work... any suggestions???

________SysAdm

Comment on Giving text box a hidden value Select or Download Code

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Re: Giving text box a hidden value by arturo (Vicar) on Mar 13, 2001 at 21:40 UTC
How about: `$form{searchstring} = param('searchstring') \|\| 'any character';` [download] ? Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Giving text box a hidden value by fpi (Monk) on Mar 13, 2001 at 22:08 UTC
How about something like this? `unless ($form{'searchstring'}) { $form{'searchstring'}= '[a-zA-Z]'; } if ($desc =~ /$form{'searchstring'}/i) { ... }` [download] It's unclear from your code, but I assume you know that this has to be done in the post-processing of the form, and not at the same time you are asking the form.... Added: You could always do something like this when you are asking the form: `<input type="text" name="searchstring" size="18" VALUE="any character">` Of course, "any character" will appear in the search box every time, and the program will default to searching for "any character" unless you add something like this: `if ($form{'searchstring'} eq "any character") { $form{'searchstring'}= '[a-zA-Z]'; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Giving text box a hidden value by McD (Chaplain) on Mar 14, 2001 at 00:00 UTC
Related tidbit - be careful of using a regular expression provided by a user, it could blow up on you. Consider using an `eval` as a safety: `eval { $desc =~ /$form{'searchstring'}/i } die "Invalid search pattern: $@" if $@;` [download] Peace, -McD	[reply] [d/l] [select]