[MacPerl] newbie questions about Macperl

[Phil Calvert <phil.calvert@email.csun.edu>]

Hi List, I've got some newbie questions.


I've been working my way through the "learning perl" book using macperl and
have typed in an example in the 1st chapter; here it is.

#!perl-w
#
init_words();
print "What is your name? ";
$name = <STDIN>;
chomp $name;

if ($name =~ /^phil\b/i) {
    print "$name, how nice that you are here!\n";
} else {
    print "Hello $name!\n";
    print "What is the secret word? ";
    $guess = <STDIN>;
    chomp $guess;
    while (! good_word($name, $guess)) {
        print "Wrong, try again. What is the secret word? ";
        $guess = <STDIN>;
        chomp $guess;
    }
}

sub good_word {
	my ($somename, $someguess) = @_;
	$somename =~ s/\W.*//;
	$somename =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
	if ($name eq "phil") {
	    return 1;
	}
	elsif (($words{$somename} || "duck" ) eq $someguess) {
	    return 1;
	} else{
	    #open MAIL, "|mail phil.calvert@csun.edu";
	   # print MAIL "Bad news: $someone guessed $someguess\n";
	   # close MAIL;
	   print "mail would be sent here if I knew how \n";

	    return 0;
	}
}
sub init_words {
    open (WORDSLIST, "wordslist") || die "can't open word list: $!";
    if (-M WORDSLIST >= 7.0) {
        die "Sorry, the wordslist is older than seven days.";
    }
    while ($name = <WORDSLIST>) {
        chomp ($name);
        $word = <WORDSLIST>;
        chomp ($word);
        $words{$name} = $word;
    }
    close (WORDSLIST) || die "couldn't close word list: $!";
}

And here's the file "wordslist"

fred
camel
barney
llama
betty
alpaca
wilma
alpaca

My 1st question is, If I enter "fred" for the  name and "camel" for the guess
everthing is ok, when I enter a name that is not on in the wordslist and
"duck" for the guess everthing works *but* when I enter "fred" as the name
and "duck" as the guess the script still won't let me out of the while
loop. Why is that?

2nd q. How would I send mail on a mac?

And the final question; is there a digest version of this mailing list?

Thanks,


-
Phil Calvert--Faculty/Staff at CSUN Music Department

Voice (818) 677-3156
FAX (818) 677-5876
E-Mail phil.calvert@csun.edu



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