Holy cow. Where to start?

1. The consultant was a flaming asshole. No -w, no strict, no comments, no doc and an 8000 line file? What a dipshit.


2. Get the Ram book aka The Perl Cookbook. Invaluable how-to recipes.


3. Get the leopard|cheetah|whatever book, Programming the Perl DBI.


4. Get command-line access to the server using ssh. Edit on the server and test from the command line that way.


5. Stock up on caffeine or stronger stimulants. Tell friends|lovers|family you won't be seeing much of them in the next 10 weeks.

You have a hell of a job ahead of you. I'm not convinced it's doable. Had the consultant left a useable code base, it would be much easier - but with variables named g_xxx in an 8000 line file with no comments, it sounds like he intentionally obfuscated his code. His code will probably be almost worthless except as a negative example.

Update: Use CPAN http://www.cpan.org - especiually the modules. You'll already be using CGI and DBI, but there may be many more there than can be uused to your advantage.

As for the "from scratch reports", that's how I'd say you should do it - from scratch. Use the consuiltant's code only for understanding table layouts. Write yours from scratch, using strict and warnings, which can save you much aggravation.

When in doubt, simplify.

I'd stay away from javascript unless you know for certain that only one type and version of browser will ever be used. Even then, I'd stay away from it - it's best use is for validating user input w/o server involvement, but it's a whole other language to learn that won't necessarily get you closer to getting the job done. Validate in perl instead, because security requres that the input be validated at the server in any case.)

Keep the HTML simple, too. Do not fall prey to the temptation to endlessly tweek the appearance of your web-pages. You don't have time, and it's futile anyhow - HTML is not meant for that, and it will look different in different browsers.

Use the standards for HTML. Do not write browser specific code. That way lies madness.

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com

All code given here is UNTESTED unless otherwise stated.

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