Just another perl hacker.

Perl is one of those things in life that you can remember the time before it happened to you, but you just don't know how you got by without it. I've programmed professionally in half a dozen languages, but none I have ever used approach perl in terms of flexibility and short development time. It is the ultimate 'quick and dirty' language.

Although you may have encountered some of my perl work on the net, it is usually back-end code that is separated from the user by a web server and a Non-Disclosure Agrement or two. Once in a while I do hack something together on my own time that is worth sharing, and I'll post it here.

Christopher Knight

Comedy central certainly thinks I'm a perl hacker... Those people have no sense of humor.

VerifyEmail.pm - A dirty little perl module that will attempt to verify the deliverability of an email address.

I wrote this for a web based comment form where visitors would frequently enter invalid email addresses. Adding this module eliminated the bounced submission emails that were coming to my account.

p4sync.pl - A Perforce automation tool.

I've been using Perforce for several years. While their Windows client is nice and slick, and makes it easy to train developers who are only used to a GUI environment, the unix command line is a far rougher tool. I wrote this tool to bridge the gap for a group of developers who were responsible for installing their work on a unix server. The user need only keep track of the change lists they have worked on, and p4sync.pl reads the change list and synchronizes only the highest revision number for the files described in all the change lists. This little script saved me hours of hand holding each week!

lockout.pl - This script prevents 'deep linking' from external sites, while allowing search engines to crawl through your site for indexing. People visiting from 'deep links' on another site or Portal are automagically translocated to an introduction page from which they can proceed to your goodies.¹

In 1996 I wrote a script that prevents external sites from linking directly into certain portions of my site. In 1999 Universal Studios realized that people liked their site enough to link to it, and their response was to summon up some demons^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers.
['Don't link or I'll sue!', 'Deep Linking Troubles Continue', ' Universal: Don't Link to Us']

Choosing a technological solution would have been the better choice, but corporations don't have a soul to consult. I would have happily sold them this script for less than the cost of the initial consultation with the lawyers; and then they wouldn't have lost face with their fans...