[25475] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 7720 Volume: 10
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Tue Feb 1 09:05:40 2005
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 06:05:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Tue, 1 Feb 2005 Volume: 10 Number: 7720
Today's topics:
Re: capturing perl forks <do-not-use@invalid.net>
Re: compacting '..' path segments using File::Spec <1usa@llenroc.ude.invalid>
Re: compacting '..' path segments using File::Spec <nobull@mail.com>
Re: file locking module (replace z with h, spam protection)
Re: Invisible cache for LWP / Mechanize? <jakob.fix@gmail.com>
Re: localtime question <vek@station02.ohout.pharmapartners.nl>
Re: Newbie Hash question. <tadmc@augustmail.com>
Re: Newbie Hash question. <tadmc@augustmail.com>
Re: Obfuscating mod_perl code <Deke@nospam.com>
Re: Obfuscating mod_perl code <toreau@gmail.com>
perl and web development <Deke@nospam.com>
Re: perl and web development <spamtrap@dot-app.org>
Re: perl and web development <twittek@smail.uni-koeln.de>
Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: tadmc@augustmail.com
Problem with HTML::Form and several fields of same name (Andreas Grothey)
Re: recursive function and hashe <sppNOSPAM@libello.com>
Re: what's OOP's jargons and complexities? <devnull@kma.eu.org>
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 01 Feb 2005 09:46:11 +0100
From: Arndt Jonasson <do-not-use@invalid.net>
Subject: Re: capturing perl forks
Message-Id: <yzd7jls7jn0.fsf@invalid.net>
"A. Sinan Unur" <1usa@llenroc.ude.invalid> writes:
> patrisha@alumni.washington.edu wrote in news:1107199869.521019.254470
> @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
>
> > That does help,
>
> What does help? Please provide some context when replying. The fact that
> you and I know what we are talking about at this point in time does not
> mean others also do.
True.
It seems that lately, the correlation between context-less answers and
the post coming from groups.google.com is near 100%. I haven't tried
groups.google.com myself, so I don't know how hard it is to make a
proper posting with it, but it seems obvious to me that it is
misleading people into breaking long-standing and natural traditions of
posting.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:33:29 GMT
From: "A. Sinan Unur" <1usa@llenroc.ude.invalid>
Subject: Re: compacting '..' path segments using File::Spec
Message-Id: <Xns95F0571965349asu1cornelledu@127.0.0.1>
Josef Moellers <josef.moellers@fujitsu-siemens.com> wrote in news:ctncm2
$til$1@nntp.fujitsu-siemens.com:
> ofer@netapt.com wrote:
>> I tried the following code to follow the symlink and then elegantly
>> combine the two into a final absolute path to the real file:
...
>> It works... but instead of producing '/foo/somefile', which is what I
>> want, it produces '/foo/bar/../somefile'. It is technically correct,
I think you need canonpath:
D:\Home\asu1\UseNet\clpmisc> cat fs.pl
#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Spec;
my $p = '../../../asu1/../';
$p = File::Spec->rel2abs($p);
$p = File::Spec->canonpath($p);
print "$p\n";
__END__
D:\Home\asu1\UseNet\clpmisc> fs
D:\Home
Sinan.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:29:45 +0000
From: Brian McCauley <nobull@mail.com>
Subject: Re: compacting '..' path segments using File::Spec
Message-Id: <ctnvu7$in0$1@sun3.bham.ac.uk>
ofer@netapt.com wrote:
> Here's the scenario:
>
> I am given a path to a file, which is actually a relative symlink.
> Example:
>
> /foo/bar/somelink -> ../somefile
>
> I tried the following code to follow the symlink and then elegantly
> combine the two into a final absolute path to the real file:
>
> use File::Spec;
> my $symlink = '/foo/bar/somelink';
> my $realfile = readlink( $symlink );
> unless ( File::Spec->file_name_is_absolute( $realfile ) ) {
> my ( $volume, $directories, $file ) = File::Spec->splitpath( $symlink
> );
> $realfile = File::Spec->rel2abs( $realfile, $directories );
> }
>
> It works... but instead of producing '/foo/somefile', which is what I
> want, it produces '/foo/bar/../somefile'. It is technically correct,
> but not as elegant
So elegant is more important than correct?
IIRC File::Spec works only with the file spec in astract. It does not
assume the file spec refers to a file system to which it currently has
access. As such it cannot tell if bar is a directory or a symlink.
Cwd::abspath, on the other hand will give you the canonical absolute
path with no symbolic references.
> as I would like, and makes the final result
> unnecessarily depend on the continued existance of the 'bar'
> subdirectory in order for the path to remain valid (this data is going
> into a long-term database).
>
> Any ideas?
Yes, don't do it.
Seriously, if the user chooses to specify the path to the file using one
or more symlinks it is quite possibly because that is what they consider
to be the (logically) canonical location of the data and the absolute
(physically) canonical path is subject to change.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:03:28 +0100
From: "D. Marxsen" <detlef.marxsen@tdds-gmbz.de (replace z with h, spam protection)>
Subject: Re: file locking module
Message-Id: <ctngl4$tbi$1@domitilla.aioe.org>
<ofer@netapt.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1107242575.595479.164370@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> module ( dist updated )
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> IO::File::flock ( IO-File-flock-0.10 26 Apr 2004 )
> IO::File::flock ( IO-File-Lockable-0.31 16 Jul 2004 )
> IO::LockedFile::Flock ( IO-LockedFile-0.23 20 Feb 2003 )
> File::Flock ( File-Flock-104.111901 19 Nov 2004 )
>
>
> Anyone have any experience with any of the above, and want to recommend
> one? Incidentally, this is why I think a CPAN wiki would be neat. :)
Hi,
I don't use any of them (and use an own method for locking) but just a hint:
Get the book "Perl Cookbook" (or similar, I know the German title only) from
O'Reilly. There is a very good section in it concerning various methods of
file locking.
Cheers,
Detlef.
--
D. Marxsen, TD&DS GmbH
detlef.marxsen@tdds-gmbz.de (replace z with h, spam protection)
------------------------------
Date: 1 Feb 2005 01:18:41 -0800
From: "jfix" <jakob.fix@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Invisible cache for LWP / Mechanize?
Message-Id: <1107249521.436612.265290@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
Thanks for your response, brian.
Problem is I am not sure HTML::SimpleLinkExtor works for ftp sites. I
am using LWP because it's the only module I found to be able to access
the ftp site from behind our authenticated HTTP firewall.
In the beginning I tried Net::FTP::Recursive, together with Net::Config
for the firewall configuration, but this didn't work either.
Well, I am not exactly stuck as it works from time to time, but it
would be nice to actually understand why LWP doesn't return the actual
state. May have to plunge in the module code to understand ...
Again, thanks for your reply,
--
cheers,
Jakob.
------------------------------
Date: 01 Feb 2005 08:47:14 GMT
From: Villy Kruse <vek@station02.ohout.pharmapartners.nl>
Subject: Re: localtime question
Message-Id: <slrncvuggi.2ev.vek@station02.ohout.pharmapartners.nl>
On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 02:26:39 +0100,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson <noreply@gunnar.cc> wrote:
> Yuri Shtil wrote:
>> the localtime function converts the system time from seconds to an array
>> ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst).
>>
>> How do I accomplish a reverse conversion?
>
> perldoc Time::Local
>
Funny enough the documentation for Perl's localtime refers to this as
well as to POSIX::mktime and POSIX::strftime.
Villy
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 07:25:12 -0600
From: Tad McClellan <tadmc@augustmail.com>
Subject: Re: Newbie Hash question.
Message-Id: <slrncvv0po.rh6.tadmc@magna.augustmail.com>
Martin Kissner <news@chaos-net.de> wrote:
> I'll provide a snipped of it here in order to give you a hint to a
> possible solution and also to ask the regulars to take a look on it
> whether it can be optimized.
>
> The text file is formated like this:
>
> name1:url1
> name2:url2
>
> --- snip ---
> #!/usr/bin/perl
>
> use warnings;
> use strict;
> use HTML::Template;
Your code does not make use of that module, so why include it?
> my (%row, $row, $name, $url);
You should declare your variables in the *smallest possible* scope.
You never use the $row variable, so why declare it?
> open LINKS, "<", $file or die "Can not open $file: $!";
> while ($line = <LINKS>)
while ( my $line = <LINKS> )
> {
> my @line = split (":", $line);
> $name = $line[0];
> $url = $line[1];
You can use a "list assignment" and do away with the temporary variable.
A pattern match should *look like* a pattern match.
my($name, $url) = split (/:/, $line);
> # this is how I get the hash populated with key/value pairs
> $row{$name} = $url;
> }
--
Tad McClellan SGML consulting
tadmc@augustmail.com Perl programming
Fort Worth, Texas
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 07:26:19 -0600
From: Tad McClellan <tadmc@augustmail.com>
Subject: Re: Newbie Hash question.
Message-Id: <slrncvv0rr.rh6.tadmc@magna.augustmail.com>
Martin Kissner <news@chaos-net.de> wrote:
> use strict;
> while ($line = <LINKS>)
> my @line = split (":", $line);
You have not declared $line and @line. Didn't use strict complain?
--
Tad McClellan SGML consulting
tadmc@augustmail.com Perl programming
Fort Worth, Texas
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 04:04:59 -0500
From: Deke <Deke@nospam.com>
Subject: Re: Obfuscating mod_perl code
Message-Id: <10vuhi1n31npb9a@news.supernews.com>
Ok stealing some code by the root user especially at a hosting site is
definately there. But also I need to hide passwords and access info to
databases as well as other things - so its not just code.
How will compiling in perl work? Can it be decompiled? Can it be
integrated into mod_perl and mason and such?
ioneabu@yahoo.com wrote:
> Just put all of your secret code in modules and keep them out of the
> path that might be exposed to the web. Are you afraid that maybe the
> root user of a server that you do not own might steal your ideas? You
> could wait for Perl6 where you can compile your code to byte code which
> will be harder to read. Or, just re-use other people's publicly
> available code in modules so you don't have anything to be stolen.
>
> Just be happy you are not writing complex, valuable javascript. You
> really can't hide it at all.
>
> wana
>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 10:42:54 +0100
From: Tore Aursand <toreau@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Obfuscating mod_perl code
Message-Id: <taILd.6833$Sl3.164324@news4.e.nsc.no>
Deke wrote:
> Ok stealing some code by the root user especially at a hosting site is
> definately there. But also I need to hide passwords and access info to
> databases as well as other things - so its not just code.
1. Don't top-post.
2. Don't store "valuable" information in Perl scripts/modules.
--
Tore Aursand <tore@aursand.no>
"Nothing is certain but death and taxes. Of the two, taxes happen
annually." (Joel Fox)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 04:19:23 -0500
From: Deke <Deke@nospam.com>
Subject: perl and web development
Message-Id: <10vuid0stpcve20@news.supernews.com>
Any help on the following subjects will be much appreciated:
1. Is perl a better option than PHP for web development. Why?
2. Do many hosting sites support perl?
3. Is perl faster than PHP in most instances?
4. Considerng that Zend purposely cripples php speed so that they can
sell/promote their performance products and perl is truly open, will
perl run at its maximum - especially with a compiler in perl 6?
6. Is compiled perl 6 code compatible with mod_perl and mason?
Thanks!
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 05:55:23 -0500
From: Sherm Pendley <spamtrap@dot-app.org>
Subject: Re: perl and web development
Message-Id: <DLSdneSpG_6B_WLcRVn-sA@adelphia.com>
Deke wrote:
> 1. Is perl a better option than PHP for web development. Why?
There is no "One True Language" that is better for all things. What's better
for Site A may not be better for Site B. It depends on your skill with
various technologies, your hosting environment, and a variety of other
factors.
> 2. Do many hosting sites support perl?
Most of them support it to varying degrees. Basic CGI support is cheap and
easy to find; mod_perl support less so.
> 3. Is perl faster than PHP in most instances?
It depends. In general, an server-embedded interpreter (either Perl or PHP)
will perform better than a child process (either Perl or PHP). This is one
major reason why the answer to 1 is "it depends" - if your hosting company
only supports one or the other as an embedded module, that's a major plus
for the language that can be embedded.
> 4. Considerng that Zend purposely cripples php speed so that they can
> sell/promote their performance products
Prove it.
> perl run at its maximum - especially with a compiler in perl 6?
The compiler will do less than you think it will. It will compile to byte
codes - which Perl 5 already does. The difference is, 6 will offer the
ability to save compiled byte codes to disk, whereas Perl 5 has to compile
your script each time it starts up.
For small scripts that take negligible time to compile anyway, you won't
notice a difference between compiling at startup and loading pre-compiled
byte codes. For huge scripts, you'll probably see an improvement in startup
time, but no difference in execution speed.
> 6. Is compiled perl 6 code compatible with mod_perl and mason?
I'd that it will be, when Perl 6 is finished and released. That's still
pretty far off though.
sherm--
--
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Hire me! My resume: http://www.dot-app.org
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 12:41:01 +0100
From: Thomas Wittek <twittek@smail.uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: perl and web development
Message-Id: <ctnptd$i4j$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
> 1. Is perl a better option than PHP for web development. Why?
IMHO CPAN is _the_ argument for Perl. Additionally Perl has a broader
scope, PHP is generally web-focussed. When only developing websites, PHP
may be easier, but if you learn Perl you can also use your knowledge for
various other solutions. Also Perl would be the language of choice for
integration in existing systems as it has interfaces to almost anything
you can imagine in the IT world.
A big argument for PHP in version 5 would be the redesigned OO concept,
which is still a bit rudimentary (missing private modificators etc.)
Perl5, but will be completely redesigned in Perl6.
> 2. Do many hosting sites support perl?
> 3. Is perl faster than PHP in most instances?
> 4. Considerng that Zend purposely cripples php speed so that they can
> sell/promote their performance products and perl is truly open, will
> perl run at its maximum - especially with a compiler in perl 6?
Most hosters I know support PHP and Perl-CGI. So writing mod_perl
modules won't work in most cases. But internally many hosters use
mod_perl/FastCGI/... as they would waste performance not doing so. So
even your CGI-Scripts should perform well, although the CGI-approach
isn't very beautiful, because most people put the HTML into the
CGI-code. Neither is the PHP-approach beautiful as most people put the
PHP-Code into the HTML. Generally you should separate the view (HTML)
from the code (Perl/PHP) e.g. by using templates. This is an language
independent issue.
I'm degressing from the topic... :)
> 6. Is compiled perl 6 code compatible with mod_perl and mason?
I think there will be new mod_perl/mason versions supporting Perl6.
Currently there already exists a mod_parrot (Perl6's compiled bytecode).
But you don't want to use it, as it is programmed in some kind of
assembly language. Of course you will be able to run compiled Perl6
scripts on mod_parrot, but currently everything about Perl6 is still
very experimental.
-Thomas
------------------------------
Date: 01 Feb 2005 08:22:22 GMT
From: tadmc@augustmail.com
Subject: Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: 1.5 $)
Message-Id: <41ff3c3d$0$23559$8b463f8a@news.nationwide.net>
Outline
Before posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Must
- Check the Perl Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Check the other standard Perl docs (*.pod)
Really Really Should
- Lurk for a while before posting
- Search a Usenet archive
If You Like
- Check Other Resources
Posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Is there a better place to ask your question?
- Question should be about Perl, not about the application area
How to participate (post) in the clpmisc community
- Carefully choose the contents of your Subject header
- Use an effective followup style
- Speak Perl rather than English, when possible
- Ask perl to help you
- Do not re-type Perl code
- Provide enough information
- Do not provide too much information
- Do not post binaries, HTML, or MIME
Social faux pas to avoid
- Asking a Frequently Asked Question
- Asking a question easily answered by a cursory doc search
- Asking for emailed answers
- Beware of saying "doesn't work"
- Sending a "stealth" Cc copy
Be extra cautious when you get upset
- Count to ten before composing a followup when you are upset
- Count to ten after composing and before posting when you are upset
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Posting Guidelines for comp.lang.perl.misc ($Revision: 1.5 $)
This newsgroup, commonly called clpmisc, is a technical newsgroup
intended to be used for discussion of Perl related issues (except job
postings), whether it be comments or questions.
As you would expect, clpmisc discussions are usually very technical in
nature and there are conventions for conduct in technical newsgroups
going somewhat beyond those in non-technical newsgroups.
The article at:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
describes how to get answers from technical people in general.
This article describes things that you should, and should not, do to
increase your chances of getting an answer to your Perl question. It is
available in POD, HTML and plain text formats at:
http://mail.augustmail.com/~tadmc/clpmisc.shtml
For more information about netiquette in general, see the "Netiquette
Guidelines" at:
http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc1855.html
A note to newsgroup "regulars":
Do not use these guidelines as a "license to flame" or other
meanness. It is possible that a poster is unaware of things
discussed here. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and just
help them learn how to post, rather than assume
A note about technical terms used here:
In this document, we use words like "must" and "should" as
they're used in technical conversation (such as you will
encounter in this newsgroup). When we say that you *must* do
something, we mean that if you don't do that something, then
it's unlikely that you will benefit much from this group.
We're not bossing you around; we're making the point without
lots of words.
Do *NOT* send email to the maintainer of these guidelines. It will be
discarded unread. The guidelines belong to the newsgroup so all
discussion should appear in the newsgroup. I am just the secretary that
writes down the consensus of the group.
Before posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
Must
This section describes things that you *must* do before posting to
clpmisc, in order to maximize your chances of getting meaningful replies
to your inquiry and to avoid getting flamed for being lazy and trying to
have others do your work.
The perl distribution includes documentation that is copied to your hard
drive when you install perl. Also installed is a program for looking
things up in that (and other) documentation named 'perldoc'.
You should either find out where the docs got installed on your system,
or use perldoc to find them for you. Type "perldoc perldoc" to learn how
to use perldoc itself. Type "perldoc perl" to start reading Perl's
standard documentation.
Check the Perl Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Checking the FAQ before posting is required in Big 8 newsgroups in
general, there is nothing clpmisc-specific about this requirement.
You are expected to do this in nearly all newsgroups.
You can use the "-q" switch with perldoc to do a word search of the
questions in the Perl FAQs.
Check the other standard Perl docs (*.pod)
The perl distribution comes with much more documentation than is
available for most other newsgroups, so in clpmisc you should also
see if you can find an answer in the other (non-FAQ) standard docs
before posting.
It is *not* required, or even expected, that you actually *read* all of
Perl's standard docs, only that you spend a few minutes searching them
before posting.
Try doing a word-search in the standard docs for some words/phrases
taken from your problem statement or from your very carefully worded
"Subject:" header.
Really Really Should
This section describes things that you *really should* do before posting
to clpmisc.
Lurk for a while before posting
This is very important and expected in all newsgroups. Lurking means
to monitor a newsgroup for a period to become familiar with local
customs. Each newsgroup has specific customs and rituals. Knowing
these before you participate will help avoid embarrassing social
situations. Consider yourself to be a foreigner at first!
Search a Usenet archive
There are tens of thousands of Perl programmers. It is very likely
that your question has already been asked (and answered). See if you
can find where it has already been answered.
One such searchable archive is:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
If You Like
This section describes things that you *can* do before posting to
clpmisc.
Check Other Resources
You may want to check in books or on web sites to see if you can
find the answer to your question.
But you need to consider the source of such information: there are a
lot of very poor Perl books and web sites, and several good ones
too, of course.
Posting to comp.lang.perl.misc
There can be 200 messages in clpmisc in a single day. Nobody is going to
read every article. They must decide somehow which articles they are
going to read, and which they will skip.
Your post is in competition with 199 other posts. You need to "win"
before a person who can help you will even read your question.
These sections describe how you can help keep your article from being
one of the "skipped" ones.
Is there a better place to ask your question?
Question should be about Perl, not about the application area
It can be difficult to separate out where your problem really is,
but you should make a conscious effort to post to the most
applicable newsgroup. That is, after all, where you are the most
likely to find the people who know how to answer your question.
Being able to "partition" a problem is an essential skill for
effectively troubleshooting programming problems. If you don't get
that right, you end up looking for answers in the wrong places.
It should be understood that you may not know that the root of your
problem is not Perl-related (the two most frequent ones are CGI and
Operating System related), so off-topic postings will happen from
time to time. Be gracious when someone helps you find a better place
to ask your question by pointing you to a more applicable newsgroup.
How to participate (post) in the clpmisc community
Carefully choose the contents of your Subject header
You have 40 precious characters of Subject to win out and be one of
the posts that gets read. Don't waste them. Take care while
composing them, they are the key that opens the door to getting an
answer.
Spend them indicating what aspect of Perl others will find if they
should decide to read your article.
Do not spend them indicating "experience level" (guru, newbie...).
Do not spend them pleading (please read, urgent, help!...).
Do not spend them on non-Subjects (Perl question, one-word
Subject...)
For more information on choosing a Subject see "Choosing Good
Subject Lines":
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/D/DM/DMR/subjects.post
Part of the beauty of newsgroup dynamics, is that you can contribute
to the community with your very first post! If your choice of
Subject leads a fellow Perler to find the thread you are starting,
then even asking a question helps us all.
Use an effective followup style
When composing a followup, quote only enough text to establish the
context for the comments that you will add. Always indicate who
wrote the quoted material. Never quote an entire article. Never
quote a .signature (unless that is what you are commenting on).
Intersperse your comments *following* each section of quoted text to
which they relate. Unappreciated followup styles are referred to as
"top-posting", "Jeopardy" (because the answer comes before the
question), or "TOFU" (Text Over, Fullquote Under).
Reversing the chronology of the dialog makes it much harder to
understand (some folks won't even read it if written in that style).
For more information on quoting style, see:
http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/nquote.html
Speak Perl rather than English, when possible
Perl is much more precise than natural language. Saying it in Perl
instead will avoid misunderstanding your question or problem.
Do not say: I have variable with "foo\tbar" in it.
Instead say: I have $var = "foo\tbar", or I have $var = 'foo\tbar',
or I have $var = <DATA> (and show the data line).
Ask perl to help you
You can ask perl itself to help you find common programming mistakes
by doing two things: enable warnings (perldoc warnings) and enable
"strict"ures (perldoc strict).
You should not bother the hundreds/thousands of readers of the
newsgroup without first seeing if a machine can help you find your
problem. It is demeaning to be asked to do the work of a machine. It
will annoy the readers of your article.
You can look up any of the messages that perl might issue to find
out what the message means and how to resolve the potential mistake
(perldoc perldiag). If you would like perl to look them up for you,
you can put "use diagnostics;" near the top of your program.
Do not re-type Perl code
Use copy/paste or your editor's "import" function rather than
attempting to type in your code. If you make a typo you will get
followups about your typos instead of about the question you are
trying to get answered.
Provide enough information
If you do the things in this item, you will have an Extremely Good
chance of getting people to try and help you with your problem!
These features are a really big bonus toward your question winning
out over all of the other posts that you are competing with.
First make a short (less than 20-30 lines) and *complete* program
that illustrates the problem you are having. People should be able
to run your program by copy/pasting the code from your article. (You
will find that doing this step very often reveals your problem
directly. Leading to an answer much more quickly and reliably than
posting to Usenet.)
Describe *precisely* the input to your program. Also provide example
input data for your program. If you need to show file input, use the
__DATA__ token (perldata.pod) to provide the file contents inside of
your Perl program.
Show the output (including the verbatim text of any messages) of
your program.
Describe how you want the output to be different from what you are
getting.
If you have no idea at all of how to code up your situation, be sure
to at least describe the 2 things that you *do* know: input and
desired output.
Do not provide too much information
Do not just post your entire program for debugging. Most especially
do not post someone *else's* entire program.
Do not post binaries, HTML, or MIME
clpmisc is a text only newsgroup. If you have images or binaries
that explain your question, put them in a publically accessible
place (like a Web server) and provide a pointer to that location. If
you include code, cut and paste it directly in the message body.
Don't attach anything to the message. Don't post vcards or HTML.
Many people (and even some Usenet servers) will automatically filter
out such messages. Many people will not be able to easily read your
post. Plain text is something everyone can read.
Social faux pas to avoid
The first two below are symptoms of lots of FAQ asking here in clpmisc.
It happens so often that folks will assume that it is happening yet
again. If you have looked but not found, or found but didn't understand
the docs, say so in your article.
Asking a Frequently Asked Question
It should be understood that you may have missed the applicable FAQ
when you checked, which is not a big deal. But if the Frequently
Asked Question is worded similar to your question, folks will assume
that you did not look at all. Don't become indignant at pointers to
the FAQ, particularly if it solves your problem.
Asking a question easily answered by a cursory doc search
If folks think you have not even tried the obvious step of reading
the docs applicable to your problem, they are likely to become
annoyed.
If you are flamed for not checking when you *did* check, then just
shrug it off (and take the answer that you got).
Asking for emailed answers
Emailed answers benefit one person. Posted answers benefit the
entire community. If folks can take the time to answer your
question, then you can take the time to go get the answer in the
same place where you asked the question.
It is OK to ask for a *copy* of the answer to be emailed, but many
will ignore such requests anyway. If you munge your address, you
should never expect (or ask) to get email in response to a Usenet
post.
Ask the question here, get the answer here (maybe).
Beware of saying "doesn't work"
This is a "red flag" phrase. If you find yourself writing that,
pause and see if you can't describe what is not working without
saying "doesn't work". That is, describe how it is not what you
want.
Sending a "stealth" Cc copy
A "stealth Cc" is when you both email and post a reply without
indicating *in the body* that you are doing so.
Be extra cautious when you get upset
Count to ten before composing a followup when you are upset
This is recommended in all Usenet newsgroups. Here in clpmisc, most
flaming sub-threads are not about any feature of Perl at all! They
are most often for what was seen as a breach of netiquette. If you
have lurked for a bit, then you will know what is expected and won't
make such posts in the first place.
But if you get upset, wait a while before writing your followup. I
recommend waiting at least 30 minutes.
Count to ten after composing and before posting when you are upset
After you have written your followup, wait *another* 30 minutes
before committing yourself by posting it. You cannot take it back
once it has been said.
AUTHOR
Tad McClellan <tadmc@augustmail.com> and many others on the
comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup.
------------------------------
Date: 1 Feb 2005 04:31:35 -0800
From: agr@maths.ed.ac.uk (Andreas Grothey)
Subject: Problem with HTML::Form and several fields of same name
Message-Id: <b8fd67aa.0502010431.9ed0fa3@posting.google.com>
Hello,
I'm fairly new to Perl, so excuse me if I've missed something obvious.
It seems to me that HTML:Form doesn't work correctly if a Form has
several "select" fields of the same name.
This is what I am trying to do:
I'm taking part in Yahoo's Football Manager game (so this is all for
fun, but the excuse is that I'm trying to learn Perl this way). This
game requires a lot of tedious clicking through forms and pages, so I
thought I'd automate a lot of it using WWW::Mechanize. One of the
pages (to choose where to play which player) has a lot of "select"
fields on it, quite a few of them with repeated name (i.e. 3 named
'sturm' (=forward) if you play with 3 forwards and so on). The page is
http://de.footballmanager.yahoo.net/yfbm/positionen.view, you have to
be registered in the game to view it though.
From looking through WWW::Mechanize I thought that something like
$mech->submit_form(
form_number => 1,
fields => {
sturm => [8, 2],
}
);
would set the second 'sturm' field to 8 (i.e player number 8).
However Perl complains that it cannot find a second field of that
name.
I've spend quite a lot of time looking through WWW::Mechanize and
HTML::Form (which is called from it), and I think the problem is that
HTML::Form simply doesn't treat 'select' fields correctly: if it finds
an 'option' tag in a 'select' field it goes and looks whether it
already knows a 'select' of this name and appends the option. The
possibility that this might be a second select of the same name
doesn't seem to be tested for. The information from a closing /select
is ignored. I've actually hacked in HTML::Form adding a counter to
distiguish between different "select"s and it seems to be working for
me now.
Although as I'm fairly new to Perl, I've probably broken something
somewhere else.
So have I missed something obvious in how to use HTML::Form or
WWW::Mechanize, or have I found a bug?
Any thought?
Andreas
PS: I'm using Perl 5.8.6, HTML::Form v1.49 and WWW::Mechanize v1.06
which are the newest I could find
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 14:42:27 +0100
From: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?S=E9bastien?= Cottalorda <sppNOSPAM@libello.com>
Subject: Re: recursive function and hashe
Message-Id: <41ff8744$0$26975$626a14ce@news.free.fr>
[snip]
Thanks a lot for all of your answers.
Sébastien
--
[ retirer NOSPAM pour répondre directement
remove NOSPAM to reply directly ]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 08:55:02 +0100
From: Grumble <devnull@kma.eu.org>
Subject: Re: what's OOP's jargons and complexities?
Message-Id: <ctnckn$462$1@news-rocq.inria.fr>
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> You forgot to mention the coordinates of your secret mountain compound:
>
> 28 deg 5 min N, 86 deg 58 min E
Mount Everest?
------------------------------
Date: 6 Apr 2001 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Users-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01)
Message-Id: <null>
Administrivia:
#The Perl-Users Digest is a retransmission of the USENET newsgroup
#comp.lang.perl.misc. For subscription or unsubscription requests, send
#the single line:
#
# subscribe perl-users
#or:
# unsubscribe perl-users
#
#to almanac@ruby.oce.orst.edu.
NOTE: due to the current flood of worm email banging on ruby, the smtp
server on ruby has been shut off until further notice.
To submit articles to comp.lang.perl.announce, send your article to
clpa@perl.com.
#To request back copies (available for a week or so), send your request
#to almanac@ruby.oce.orst.edu with the command "send perl-users x.y",
#where x is the volume number and y is the issue number.
#For other requests pertaining to the digest, send mail to
#perl-users-request@ruby.oce.orst.edu. Do not waste your time or mine
#sending perl questions to the -request address, I don't have time to
#answer them even if I did know the answer.
------------------------------
End of Perl-Users Digest V10 Issue 7720
***************************************
