Perl for Web Site Management

Changes to &parse_exhibitor

The next changes in the program, at least in terms of the sequence in which commands are actually executed, are down toward the bottom, in the &parse_exhibitor subroutine. The opening comment for that routine has been updated to reflect the additional scriptwide variables the routine will now be updating:

    # extract the relevant information about a particular
    # exhibitor and store it in the appropriate hashes.
    # 
    # invoked with an array of lines read from $exhibit_file.
    # has no return value, but instead modifies the following 
    # scriptwide variables:
    #
    # %listing
    # %index_line
    # %companies_by_letter

Toward the end of the subroutine, where it is adding the current exhibitor’s listing to the %listing hash, it now includes HTML markup:

    # create the %listing entry

    $listing{$co_name}  = <<"EOF";
<H2>$co_name</H2>
<P><STRONG>Booth $booth</STRONG></P>
EOF

Also, as subsequent parts of that listing are added to $listing{$co_name}, the subroutine uses if statements to avoid adding an element if that particular element isn’t present for this particular company. Notice, though, how we’re using a one-line version of the if test that you haven’t seen before:

 $listing{$co_name} .= "<P><EM>"; $listing{$co_name} .= $address if $address; $listing{$co_name} .= "<BR>\n$address2" if $address2; $listing{$co_name} .= "<BR>\n$phone" if $phone; $listing{$co_name} .= "<BR>\n$fax (fax)" if $fax; $listing{$co_name} .= "<BR>\nEmail: <A HREF=\"mailto:$email\">$email</A>" if $email; ...