Curtis,
*sigh* Thanks for the information.
I'll tell you, my site is all flash, and I wanted to make it a bit more
interesting by having some dynamic data on the site facilitated by CGI.
Trying to find a -simple- resource for learning Perl has been a real
struggle. Perl seems more like a religion than a programming language, and
there seems to be no way to get what I need and 'plug it in'.
I am more an artist than a programmer, so I'm willing to live with
inefficiencies in my code, as long as I get the darn things working. It
seems, though, that whenever I try to find an answer to a simple question, I
have to wade through a lot of extraneous information.
It's great that people have a passion for a language, but sometimes I think
they tend to alienate the newbies and the casual user.
I just bought the latest edition of Elizabeth Castro's book, and it's great.
It tells me exactly how to get specific things done with Perl. I had first
bought O'Reilly's CGI programming with Perl, and I took it back because it
tought virtually no Perl. If I were to stick with O'Reilly, I would have to
by a small library worth of books to get some relatively simple things done.
Thanks for the info, and the pointers.. actually, that code was snipped from
another script. I'm learning Perl the same way I learned HTML...but:
$value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
Means absolutely nothing to me... but the durn script works! So I'm happy.
:)
Maybe next time I'll switch to PHP.
-g
Visit Zanpo, Virtual City
http://www.zanpo.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Curtis Poe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 4:50 PM
Subject: Re: Use CGI.pm or Parse it in the script?
> --- "G.P.Gaudreault" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > Which is faster, using the CGI.pm param function to get form input, or
parsing out the hash
> > within my script? I've got a script that currently uses a lot of system
resources, and I'm
> > looking for ways to optimize it.
>
> [snip]
>
> > Is it faster to run this, or use CGI.pm and call param()?
> >
> > -GPG
>
> Your routine is faster. It's also chock full o'bugs. For a good
discussion as to why, check out
> http://www.easystreet.com/~ovid/cgi_course/lesson_two/lesson_two.html.
>
> Ironically, earlier today I asked someone to parse their form-handling
code stating that I would
> find at least 5 bugs. The person replied that s?he hadn't really written
a form-handling routine
> but a form *validating* routine. Silly me, not seeing the context. Now,
you come along with your
> form-handling routine and I just happen to have my gun loaded, so please
don't take any of the
> following personally :)
>
> Your routine has a variety of issues, including some novel ones that I
haven't stumbled across
> before. All comments will refer to the line of code following them. I am
not trying to be cruel,
> this is just another example of why "rolling your own" is usually a bad
idea.
>
> ######################################################################
> sub getform
> # Looks like we're not using strict! Need to declare variables with
'my'.
> $buffer = "";
>
> # Doesn't allow for GET requests (or HEAD or a variety of others, but
we rarely
> # encounter those in CGI scripts.
> # There is no test to see if the read() is successful
> read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
>
> # Doesn't allow for an alternate delimiter. The semicolon (;) is
supposed to be the
> # new delimiter and systems are slowly moving towards that. Those
will break with this
> # code.
> @pairs=split(/&/,$buffer);
>
> foreach $pair (@pairs) {
> @a = split(/=/,$pair);
> $name=$a[0];
> $value=$a[1];
>
> # why didn't we do this with $name?
> $value =~ s/\+/ /g;
>
> # why didn't we do this with $name?
> $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
>
> # why are we throwing away data that we might need in the future?
> # what if you need data from a textarea tag?
> $value =~ s/[\r\n]//g;
>
> # why not add them to the %form hash?
> push (@data,$name);
> push (@data,$value);
> }
> # Oops! We just lost all multiple values.
> %form=@data;
>
> # returning a reference to the hash instead of the hash is probably
faster,
> # especially if you're working with a large hash.
> %form;
> }
> ######################################################################
>
> Let us know if you have any more questions.
>
> Cheers,
> Curtis Poe
>
> =====
> Senior Programmer
> Onsite! Technology (http://www.onsitetech.com/)
> "Ovid" on http://www.perlmonks.org/
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
> http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
