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If you're intent on rolling your own, this is a reasonably good start. A couple of suggestions:

1. Add a Configuration section. Stuff like DB connect strings belong there.

    my $odbcDSN = "PageData"
    my $dbConnectString = "dbi:ODBC:DSN=$odbcDSN";
This way, if someone wants to retarget your code to some other DBMS, they may be able to get by with only changes to the Configuration section.

2. By embedding the "usage" message so far down in the code, you increase the risk that when you add a new option, you forget to change the message. Better to either have a usage() routine at the top (where it also serves as documentation, or as part of the POD documentation. I've seen a couple of scripts that open themselves and extract the usage message from their own POD.

3. gethtml() is rather large. Look at the casually-related things that're done there, and consider ways to break them out into separate subroutines.

4. Note that many sites take defensive measures against being sucked dry by robots. At the very least, it is considered polite to stagger successive requests to the same site by 60 seconds.


In reply to Re: ChilliBot Web Crawler by dws
in thread ChilliBot Web Crawler by ChilliHead

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