Desperately seeking the help of a perl/linux-meister I consider myself an intermediate perl programmer, but this problem has had me completely stumped for days. We've been using the Public Access Terminal Control program (http://patc.sourceforge.net) to control internet access and it has worked perfectly for us until last week. The perl script which authenticates users suddenly stopped working properly, although there were no changes made to the perl code.
The script uses regular expression matching and grep to find users in a flat file database of card numbers, and in a daily-generated list of guest user numbers. If a user attempts to login using a valid barcode that is in the database, the script authenticates the user and logs them on as it should. If the user types in an invalid barcode number, the script refuses the login as it should. THE PROBLEM: If a user enters a single non-numeric character - any letter of the alphabet - or any random sequence of letters, the script will authenticate the user as a guest and log them on (guest user bnumbers start with a letter). THE QUESTION: Is there anything in the system environment (Red Hat linux 7.1, perl 5.6.0 - upgraded to 5.6.1 in an attempt to fix the problem, apache 1.3.x) that would suddenly cause grep or regular expression functions, or simple file access/reading functions to stop working or not work right? This system has worked perfectly for 3 years, and nothing has been changed recently. Any suggestions, comments, assistance will be greatly appreciated. TIA Jon Legree Library Technology Specialist Yorba Linda Public Library Yorba Linda, CA http://www.ylpl.lib.ca.us