CGI Scripts

Here are a few freeware Perl and Perl/CGI scripts that run on Unix systems. All of them are written in Perl, and can be run from ordinary user accounts. None of them requires server-side includes.

sendform.cgi Form Mailer

v1.45, updated July 22, 2002: The sendform.cgi form processor mails you whatever a user enters on an HTML form. The script can be installed in the system cgi-bin directory, so that any local user can use it.

New: More protection added against improper use of the mailer utility.

Newcal Rotating Events Calendar

Updated January 8, 2001: Newcal takes a simple text file of event listings and builds a static Web site from it. The script combines the text file with a set of 12 monthly HTML templates. It isn't a CGI script. You run it from the command line to update the site each month, week, day, or at any time.

I wrote this script to automate Jean Buskin's Seattle Area Peace and Justice Events Calendar. It builds a Web site from her existing text file, in the format that she has used for many years. One of the main goals for the script was that it shouldn't require any extra time or work to update the Web calendar, beyond that needed for the plain text version. This script has been in weekly use for four years.

For each event in the text file, the text should be all in one paragraph, and the date(s) should be in the first line of the paragraph. From the text file, Newcal creates a rotating monthly one-year calendar starting with the current month. It makes hyperlinks of any e-mail addresses and URLs in the text.

The PJ Calendar uses a bare-bones page layout, but you can design the templates using any kind of HTML. A more complex template layout, that uses server-side includes to call standardized site-wide page headers and footers, is the former SCN Volunteers Calendar for December, 2001 and its matching SCN Volunteers Calendar home page.

Web Newsreaders

Updated February 6, 2001: There are two newsreaders here. The first is actually a "newsreader helper" instead of a self-contained newsreader. It retrieves newsgroup names via nntp and builds a set of Web menus that let you click on news:// URLs with a browser that includes a built-in newsreader. The second newsreader is a read-only CGI newsreader that is compatible with any browser. It can search for newsgroup names or name fragments that the user types in a form input box.

Logtail Access Log Snapshot

Updated September 7, 1998: Logtail lets you quickly check your Web server's access log for the latest usage information for your page or directory. The script doesn't read the log file sequentially. It seeks to the end of the file and backs up from there. This lets it work more quickly on large log files.

Loadav Average System Load Snapshot

Loadav displays the results of the uptime command, with a few explanatory notes and a little extra formatting.

Pickmail User Lookup

Updated February 14, 1996: Pickmail lets you enter a fragment of a user's real name or user name, and then view the usernames that match. It displays mailto links for the matching e-mail addresses.