Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 08:38:53 -0500
From: Michael Carman <mjcarman@home.com>
Subject: Re: On The Brink....
Message-Id: <3B40796D.FC5FA5F3@home.com>

Cro wrote:
> 
> My script ranks sites.
> Information is stored about each site on the list in a .dat 
> file, including it's current position, name and URL.
> These 'member files' are stored in a directory called 'members'
> (named 1.dat, 2.dat 3.dat.....) where each site has it's own file.

If your script is going to rank a large number of sites, it's probably
better to *not* have a seperate file for each one, but to use a DBM
(database) file instead. That's another issue, though...

> Within a member's file;
> @data[3]    =    Current Position
> @data[4]    =    SiteName
> @data[5]    =    SiteURL

Don't use a slice when you want an element.

@data    is an array.
$data[0] is the zeroth element in an array.
@data[0] is an array slice (consisting of one element).

Perl will often do the Right Thing for you, but it's better to say what
you mean.

> To overcome this problem I will need 6 new variables:
> $1SiteName    -    Stores Site Ranked First Name
> $1SiteURL        -    Stores Site Ranked First URL
> $2SiteName    -    Stores Site Ranked Second Name
> $2SiteURL    -    Stores Site Ranked Second URL
> $3SiteName    - Stores Site Ranked Third Name
> $3SiteUR    - Stores Site Ranked Third URL

Whenever you find yourself naming variables this way, think about using
an array, hash, or combination thereof:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @site;

while (my $line = <DATA>) {
    chomp($line);
    my ($name, $url) = split(/\s+/, $line);
    push(@site, {name => $name, url => $url});
}

foreach my $i (0 .. $#site) {
    print "Name: $site[$i]{name}\n";
    print " URL: $site[$i]{url}\n";
}

__DATA__
Site1  URL1
Site2  URL2
Site3  URL3

(Note: That isn't quite the most perlish way of writing it; I'm going
for clarity, here.)

Read the perlref manpage -- it has lots of info on creating complex data
structures. Once you get your data in the right format, manipulating it
should become easy.

-mjc