Introduction to the Practicalities of Searching

1
Introduction to the Practicalities of Searching
2
What are we trying to do when we search for
information on the web ?
3
What are we going to do ?

• We are going to find pages which contain the
  words we typed in the box

4
What do we check ?

• If you type href do you want every page in
  which it occurs ?

5
What is Perl ?

• Perl is an interpreted scripting language
• Written by Larry Wall
• initially for text processing
• Public Domain (I.e. free)
• Open Source
• versions for Unix, Linux, Windows 95/98/NT
• Written in C
• easily extended with Modules (not all available
  on all platforms)
• NB Perl is not a GUI based language!

6
Why use Perl ?

• Excellent text processing using pattern matching
• Text is central concern for COM268
• Fast and flexible file handling
• Automatic memory allocation
• No memory errors!
• Widely used on the Internet to write CGI scripts
• An in-demand skill!