Re: Collapsing smaller scripts into a larger one, request for comment

[jcb]

How is that a problem? You seem to still be storing one file per page, just with a .txt suffix instead of a .pl suffix, unless I misunderstand. Another option is to ensure that the list of valid collections is stored in some recognizable way at each index, and have the menu builder parse the indexes.

[Lady_Aleena]

Here is the difference:

./Collections            # is where scripts live and is where base_men
+u looks for menu items
./files/data/Collections # is where data lives and is not where base_m
+enu looks for menu items

Taking the data outside of individual scripts means I need to figure out how I am going to rewrite base_menu to find items to add to my site menu that will work for all the index files (see below).

./Collections/index.pl
./Fandom/index.pl
./Fandom/Crossovers/index.pl
./Fandom/Crossovers/Big_fake_companies/index.pl
./Fandom/Crossovers/Westphall_crossovers/index.pl
./Fandom/Fictional_family_trees/index.pl
./Fandom/The_Riftwar/index.pl
./Fandom/Xanth/index.pl
./Miscellany/index.pl
./Miscellany/Geeky_thoughts/index.pl
./Miscellany/Political_opinions/index.pl
./Movies/index.pl
./Role_playing/index.pl
./Role_playing/Locations/Afma/index.pl
./Role_playing/Locations/index.pl
./Role_playing/Magic_items/index.pl
./Role_playing/Miscellany/index.pl
./Role_playing/Monsters/index.pl
./Role_playing/Player_characters/index.pl
./Role_playing/Reference_tables/index.pl
./Writing/index.pl
./Writing/Erotic_fiction/index.pl
./Writing/Fan_fiction/index.pl
./Writing/Poetry/index.pl

The data for those indexes will be in the following.

./files/data/Collections/
./files/data/Fandom/
./files/data/Fandom/Crossovers/
./files/data/Fandom/Crossovers/Big_fake_companies/
./files/data/Fandom/Crossovers/Westphall_crossovers/
./files/data/Fandom/Fictional_family_trees/
./files/data/Fandom/The_Riftwar/
./files/data/Fandom/Xanth/
./files/data/Miscellany/
./files/data/Miscellany/Geeky_thoughts/
./files/data/Miscellany/Political_opinions/
./files/data/Movies/
./files/data/Role_playing/
./files/data/Role_playing/Locations/
./files/data/Role_playing/Locations/Afma/
./files/data/Role_playing/Magic_items/
./files/data/Role_playing/Miscellany/
./files/data/Role_playing/Monsters/
./files/data/Role_playing/Player_characters/
./files/data/Role_playing/Reference_tables/
./files/data/Writing/
./files/data/Writing/Erotic_fiction/
./files/data/Writing/Fan_fiction/
./files/data/Writing/Poetry/

This is what I am grappling with in my head.

[jcb]

For each index.pl in the equivalent of find . -name index.pl, try ($dir = $indexfile) =~ s!^[.]/!./files/data/! and glob $dir.'*.txt' (obviously untested) as a starting point, if the files in those directories correspond to menu items.