As requested, I ran perltidy on my script to see if I could make it easier for
somebody else to read. Perhaps a little explanation of how it works would also
be helpful:
Tutorial.cgi is triggered by a user who wishes to enlarge his/her vocabulary
of
technical terms in a certain field. The user sees an .html file that gives him
a way to select any of several categories for review, or to select a review
that includes all categories at once. The SEND button addresses the script
with a line including CATEGORY=, which signals that this is a new tutorial so
the script doesn't look for cookies. The script reads a database containing
hundreds of terms with their associated categories, definitions, and
vignettes.
Using this info, the script composes a simple multiple choice question,
composes a web page on the fly, and sends this back to the user. It also sets
several cookies containing the state of the tutorial. It should then run out
of
instructions and die.
The user clicks on a button ("A" or "B"), which fires back a string that
reawakens the script and shows it what answer the user chose. The script
inspects the cooky-jar to determine the state of the script, compares the
user's selection with its expectation, and fires back one of two new web
pages.
If the user chose the right answer, he gets congratulations and a new problem.
If it was a wrong answer, he gets a correction, which includes the correct
term, definition, vignette, and a sound-file with pronunciation of the term.
Then the user has to click to continue the tutorial. That click sends a string
that re-awakens the script and cues it to send a new question.
The state of the tutorial includes a score that reflects the user's
cumulative
progress on the tutorial. As the score mounts, the script progressively
increases the difficulty of the questions. At the highest difficulty level,
the
user has to read either the definition or the vignette and respond by typing
the correct term in a text box. There is no real endpoint to the tutorial: the
user decides when he has had enough. Any given tutorial can be interrupted and
resumed within 24 hours, after which the cookies expire.
To avoid repetition of previous discussions, let me remind everybody that this
script works perfectly every time as far as I can tell. That is to say, it
never hangs and always gives the expected result. Also, with all the
error-checking turned on, no error appears on the server log. The mysterious
problem is that the script apparently doesn't terminate as expected. Although
opportunities for mischief abound in any 500-line script, they all appear
BEFORE the output stage. Since the output is as expected, I'm having trouble
imagining what would cause the script to fail to terminate.
I'm sure this script isn't up to professional standards, and becoming an IT
professional is not among my ambitions. I'm offering the script free to users
as a public service, and I just want to find a way to do that without crashing
Hostmonster's servers. Your assistance will be sincerely appreciated.
Script follows in part 2 because of space limitations.
John M Rathbun MD
