Perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

I like Perl. I have never worked with any tool that is easier to get going or can rip through text faster. I have used it for bulk file editing, database management and CGI scripting. I first encountered Perl in 1997.

Below is a list of some of the programs I have written in Perl.

• I am using Macromedia Ultradev and Fireworks to build this web site. When Fireworks creates the the menus above it produces a javascript file and an HTML page that contains the graphic links and another Java script function that defines the menus. Given the large number of pages in this web site, I wanted to be able to update the menus on all of the pages without updating all of the pages. I created a Perl program to merge the javascript code in the fw_menu.js file and the html file and create a single javascript file containing all the javascript. In addition, it inserts a variable reference "pathToRoot" so that all of the absolute link paths in the generated javascript become relative to the page itself.
• I had designed an application framework which used identical APIs in both C++ and Java. I need an easy way to move business logic from the C++ version to the Java version and back. Java objects have to be 'new'ed and C++ object do not. I create a Perl program that could convert back and forth between Java and C++ versions.
• In building the AS/400 conversion process, I also needed to convert CL (shell scripts like language) programs to the C++ framework. For CL conversion, I did not need the same level of complexity as for RPG. I still used a recursive parser, but there is only a single block command. This program read the CL scripts and create framework compatible C++.
• In building the AS/400 conversion process, we had nearly 5000 source files to sort through, in the end we needed 662 converted functionalities. I built a Perl program that scanned all 5000 files analyzing the includes (copy books, data file definitions and data structure definitions). From the analysis it selected the 502 RPG and 160 CL programs that actually needed to be run through the converters to produce a running NT or UNIX based application server.
• Porting an AS/400 RPG system to C++, in the new normalized database hundreds of attributes moved from their original tables. Additionally, we wanted to break the source code into the business objects that each piece of code logically fit into. I created a map between the old and new field structures and a Perl program that could be run against any piece of RPG source to product a piece of C++ that was code that was customized to be inserted in a specific C++ business object.
• The biggest project I ever did in Perl. It started as a web database to replace a number of proprietary C based CGI scripts in managing a number of web sites that were being migrated to standard commercial web hosting sites where c was not available. When I was done I had a Perl based object oriented set of applications for managing an entire database driven web site. There is the core database module, an administration module, a template processing module, an e-mail form module and a data entry module. With this system an Administrator logs into the administration module where they can maintain databases, page templates, etc. Because of the internal database manager no external database is required, response times are more limited by the transmission time than the database. I have tested this system with up to about 150,000 records in a specific table. The database support relational queries and templates can be nested to provide extremely varied results.

C++

Java