Perl Projects
Perl CGI scripts and file utilities from early web work
Perl CGI Scripts (2003/2004)
Collection of Perl CGI scripts for web applications, developed in 2003-2004. These scripts use file-based storage (no database) - data is read and written directly to text files.
Background: CGI (Common Gateway Interface) was standardized in 1993 and became the primary method for creating dynamic web content in the 1990s and early 2000s. Before PHP became widespread and modern web frameworks existed, CGI was the universal solution for server-side scripting. It works by having the web server execute external programs (like Perl scripts) and pass HTTP request data via environment variables and standard input. The script generates HTML output that the server sends back to the client. While CGI has performance limitations (each request spawns a new process), it was simple to deploy, worked on any web server, and didn't require special server modules or configurations. In 2003-2004, shared hosting providers commonly supported CGI, making it accessible for small websites and personal projects. These scripts demonstrate the file-based data storage approach common at the time, when database setup was more complex and many hosting plans didn't include database access.
Scripts:
- Guestbook CGI (Otzov) → - CGI guestbook with moderation, pagination, and file-based storage (2003)
- Order Form CGI (Zakaz) → - Order processing script with status tracking and admin interface (2004)
Perl Utilities (2001-2007)
Collection of utility Perl scripts for various tasks including file processing, network operations, and system administration.
Utilities:
- Kill Duplicates → - Finds and removes duplicate files by binary comparison (2003)
- MD5 Extractor → - Extracts MD5 password hashes and credentials from files (2003)
- Sequential Rename → - Renames files with sequential zero-padded numbers (2003)
- Extract Images → - Extracts image URLs from HTML files recursively (2004)
- Multi-Thread Runner → - Executes commands in parallel using 4 threads (2004)
- Repack Archives → - Extracts and repacks .pak archive files (2005)
- Make Album → - Creates HTML image catalog/gallery with thumbnails (2007)
