On Sat, Nov 23, 2002 at 08:02:00AM +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi, > > why would you want to use Perl in the first place? no other alternatives? > Maybe, But I am not a coder at all. > > your problem is straight forward and if you are not familiar with Perl, you > > might want to go with another language. i don't think it will be that hard > > right? c/c++? java? shell script? > hehehehee, if I knew that then i would have made it myself. I know a bit > of shell scripting, but I never knew that one can generate random string > in shell. > Can you help me do it in perl? > My requirement is very very simple. To write a program which will > generate *just* a random string of say 8 characters. Characters allowed > will be - [a-z] [A-Z] [0-9]. Can it be done?
By now you will probably have worked out that this community is very happy to help people of any ability to improve their Perl skills, but is rather reluctant just to hand out ready-made solutions. This is as it should be - if you want someone to do work for you you generally pay them in some way. Most of the regular posters on this list could probably knock up a simple solution and post it with very little effort. I could certainly do so in a fraction of the time it will take to write this mail. So why hasn't anyone just done that? Well, I suppose it comes down to the payment aspect. Perl is free, as are all the modules on CPAN. For many of us Perl has made our lives considerably easier and more fun. How do we repay the people who have created Perl? Some pay money - https://donate.perl-foundation.org/ Some help to work on Perl development. Some contribute to CPAN. Some help others to learn in fora such as this. Some don't. In your particular situation things started off well. On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 04:01:39PM +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I am not at all familar to perl. I want to write a small perl script That's great. You want to write the script, but need help. You'll find plenty here. And you got a reply: On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 03:10:47AM -0800, John W. Krahn wrote: > # character set to choose from as per your example > my @chars = ( 'a' .. 'z', 'A' .. 'Z', 0 .. 9 ); > # pick eight random characters from the array > my $string = join '', map $chars[ rand @chars ], 1 .. 8; But then things took a turn for the worse. You told us that you didn't know what to do with the advice and just wanted a solution. I decided to ignore your request, but since you were persistent I poked around your web site, and that's what has prompted me to reply. It looks as though you have already taught yourself a number of skills, including the ability to set up and maintain linux systems, networking, mail, vi and others. It seems that Perl could be a useful tool for you, and that you are willing and have the ability to work things out for yourself. It's been a while since I learnt Perl, and the resources now available weren't then, so I thought I'd see how easy it is for a determined beginner to learn Perl. Based on the name of this list, my first stop was www.perl.org. Right at the top is a like to learn.perl.org, and the first line there points us to perlintro. This is a nice document which will get you started. This document, along with John's reply will get you to where you want to be, at least for now. After a brief introduction you will learn how to run a Perl program, the basics of syntax, variable types and a little more. So, read that document, and make sure you know how to run a Perl program, if you don't already. Then look at John's reply. This will form the bulk of your program. It would be good to understand it, especially if you are using it to generate passwords, but for now you might just want to cut-and-paste it. After those two lines, you will have the password in $string. Now you just need to print it. You will find how to do that near the top of perlintro. If all goes well, you should have written your first Perl program. This might be the start of a wonderful journey for you. There is a lot to learn, but it doesn't have to be learnt all at once - or even at all. There are plenty of resources available, and this list will be happy to help if you can show that you are willing to help yourself. With any luck you will improve yourself and will later be able to contribute back to the community in some way. Come back to the list with any questions, or let us know of your success. -- Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pjcj.net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]