mw

#! /usr/bin/perl -w
use Socket;
use strict;

my $word = $ARGV[0] or die "Usage: mw word\n";
my $host = "www.m-w.com";
my $port = 80;
my $socketaddr;
my $content = "jump=$word"; # This seems to work with white space in word
my $wholePage = "";
my $form = "";
my $buf = "";
my @listvalue = ();
my @option = ();
my $selections = 0;
my $finished_selections = 0;
my $reentry = 0;
my $count = 0;

while ($content) {

openSock();
post ($content);

$wholePage = "";
while ( <SOCK> ) {
	$wholePage .= $_;
}
close SOCK;

print "****************************************";

# pick out the form, /s matches newline with '.' /g is greedy
# /m matches internal newline

if ( $wholePage =~ /The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary.*(<PRE>.*<\/PRE>)/gs ) {
	print "\nCan't find $word, but here are some suggestions\n";
	$form = $1;
}
elsif ($wholePage =~ /(<form .*<\/form>)/gs ) {
	$form = $1;
}
else {
	die "Don't know what to do with $word\n";
}

# this is heavy duty kludge, geared toward www.m-w.com, needs maintenance
# find out if the form has a selection of options
$selections = 0;
if ($form =~ s/^To view.*?GO TO.$//m) {
	$selections = 1;
	@option = ($form =~ /^<option.*>(.*)$/mg);
	@listvalue = ($form =~ /name=list value="(.*)">/g);
}

# convert html into something more readable
$form =~ s/<br>/\n/g;       # change html linebreak to newline
$form =~ s/<option.*?\n//mg;# delete the selection list, to be shown later
$form =~ s/<[^>]*>//g;      # delete all the other html tags
$form =~ s/\n+/\n/g;        # delete multiple newlines

# visualize non-alpha-numerical ANSI characters
convert_char ();

print $form;
print "\n";

# prompt the user for further actions: look up another word or stop here
$content = "";
if ($selections | $reentry) {
  do {
	print "----------------------------------------\n";
	print "Here are the related words:\n";
	for (my $i=0, my $j = 1;$i<@option;$i++, $j++){
		print "$j: $option[$i]\n";
	}
	print "\nEnter a number to select from the list, or enter . to quit\n";

	$buf = <STDIN>;
	chomp $buf;
	if ($buf eq '.') {
		$content = "";
		$finished_selections = 1;
	}
	elsif ($buf !~ /\d/ or $buf > @option or $buf <= 0) {
		print "What did you just do? Enter . to end the session\n";
		$content = "";
		$finished_selections = 0;
	}
	else {
		$buf -= 1;
		$content = "hdwd=$word&book=Dictionary&jump=";
		$content .= urlencode ($option[$buf]);
		$content .= "&list=";
		$content .= urlencode ($listvalue[0]);
		$reentry = 1;
		$finished_selections = 1;
	}

  } until ( $finished_selections )

} # end of if selections

} # end of while content


###########
# subroutine: open a socket at SOCK
###########

sub openSock {
$socketaddr= sockaddr_in $port, inet_aton $host or die "Bad hostname\n";
socket SOCK, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, getprotobyname('tcp') or die "Bad socket\n";
connect SOCK, $socketaddr or die "Bad connection\n";
select((select(SOCK), $| = 1)[0]);
}


###########
# subroutine: urlencode a string
###########

sub urlencode {

my $ask = shift @_;
my @a2 = unpack "C*", $ask;
my $s2 = "";
while (@a2) {
    $s2 .= sprintf "%%%X", shift @a2;
}
return $s2;

}


###########
# subroutine: send post request to target web site
###########

sub post {

my $content = shift @_;
print SOCK "POST http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary HTTP/1.0\r\n";
print SOCK "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
my $contentLength = length $content;
print SOCK "Content-length: $contentLength\r\n";
print SOCK "\r\n";
print SOCK "$content";

}

###########
# subroutine: make those non-English characters visible
###########
# uses the global variable $form
# the character codes are iso8859-1

sub convert_char {

$form =~ s/&quot;/chr(34)/eg;
$form =~ s/&amp;/chr(38)/eg;
$form =~ s/&lt;/chr(60)/eg;
$form =~ s/&gt;/chr(62)/eg;
$form =~ s/&nbsp;/chr(160)/eg;
$form =~ s/&iexcl;/chr(161)/eg;
$form =~ s/&cent;/chr(162)/eg;
$form =~ s/&pound;/chr(163)/eg;
$form =~ s/&curren;/chr(164)/eg;
$form =~ s/&yen;/chr(165)/eg;
$form =~ s/&brvbar;/chr(166)/eg;
$form =~ s/&sect;/chr(167)/eg;
$form =~ s/&uml;/chr(168)/eg;
$form =~ s/&copy;/chr(169)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ordf;/chr(170)/eg;
$form =~ s/&laquo;/chr(171)/eg;
$form =~ s/&not;/chr(172)/eg;
$form =~ s/&shy;/chr(173)/eg;
$form =~ s/&reg;/chr(174)/eg;
$form =~ s/&macr;/chr(175)/eg;
$form =~ s/&deg;/chr(176)/eg;
$form =~ s/&plusmn;/chr(177)/eg;
$form =~ s/&sup2;/chr(178)/eg;
$form =~ s/&sup3;/chr(179)/eg;
$form =~ s/&acute;/chr(180)/eg;
$form =~ s/&micro;/chr(181)/eg;
$form =~ s/&para;/chr(182)/eg;
$form =~ s/&middot;/chr(183)/eg;
$form =~ s/&cedil;/chr(184)/eg;
$form =~ s/&sup1;/chr(185)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ordm;/chr(186)/eg;
$form =~ s/&raquo;/chr(187)/eg;
$form =~ s/&frac14;/chr(188)/eg;
$form =~ s/&frac12;/chr(189)/eg;
$form =~ s/&frac34;/chr(190)/eg;
$form =~ s/&iquest;/chr(191)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Agrave;/chr(192)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Aacute;/chr(193)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Acirc;/chr(194)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Atilde;/chr(195)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Auml;/chr(196)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Aring;/chr(197)/eg;
$form =~ s/&AElig;/chr(198)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ccedil;/chr(199)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Egrave;/chr(200)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Eacute;/chr(201)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ecirc;/chr(202)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Euml;/chr(203)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Igrave;/chr(204)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Iacute;/chr(205)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Icirc;/chr(206)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Iuml;/chr(207)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ETH;/chr(208)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ntilde;/chr(209)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ograve;/chr(210)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Oacute;/chr(211)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ocirc;/chr(212)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Otilde;/chr(213)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ouml;/chr(214)/eg;
$form =~ s/&times;/chr(215)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Oslash;/chr(216)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ugrave;/chr(217)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Uacute;/chr(218)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Ucirc;/chr(219)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Uuml;/chr(220)/eg;
$form =~ s/&Yacute;/chr(221)/eg;
$form =~ s/&THORN;/chr(222)/eg;
$form =~ s/&szlig;/chr(223)/eg;
$form =~ s/&agrave;/chr(224)/eg;
$form =~ s/&aacute;/chr(225)/eg;
$form =~ s/&acirc;/chr(226)/eg;
$form =~ s/&atilde;/chr(227)/eg;
$form =~ s/&auml;/chr(228)/eg;
$form =~ s/&aring;/chr(229)/eg;
$form =~ s/&aelig;/chr(230)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ccedil;/chr(231)/eg;
$form =~ s/&egrave;/chr(232)/eg;
$form =~ s/&eacute;/chr(233)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ecirc;/chr(234)/eg;
$form =~ s/&euml;/chr(235)/eg;
$form =~ s/&igrave;/chr(236)/eg;
$form =~ s/&iacute;/chr(237)/eg;
$form =~ s/&icirc;/chr(238)/eg;
$form =~ s/&iuml;/chr(239)/eg;
$form =~ s/&eth;/chr(240)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ntilde;/chr(241)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ograve;/chr(242)/eg;
$form =~ s/&oacute;/chr(243)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ocirc;/chr(244)/eg;
$form =~ s/&otilde;/chr(245)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ouml;/chr(246)/eg;
$form =~ s/&divide;/chr(247)/eg;
$form =~ s/&oslash;/chr(248)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ugrave;/chr(249)/eg;
$form =~ s/&uacute;/chr(250)/eg;
$form =~ s/&ucirc;/chr(251)/eg;
$form =~ s/&uuml;/chr(252)/eg;
$form =~ s/&yacute;/chr(253)/eg;
$form =~ s/&thorn;/chr(254)/eg;
$form =~ s/&yuml;/chr(255)/eg;

}

=head1 NAME
Save this file to "mw", which stands for merriam-webster, then you can run it as
"mw word" or "perl mw word"

=head1 DESCRIPTION
a simple web robot to look up a word from Merriam-Webster site using POST 
method, and print the text response to STDOUT. 

=head1 README
A special-purpose simple script that looks up a word from Merriam-Webster site.
This script only uses Socket and no other external modules or packages, and it 
demonstrates the use of POST method to submit a FORM. However, the specific use 
of this script is limited to talking to www.m-w.com, and the fact that many 
parameters are hard-coded makes it dependent on the stability of that web site. 
Nonetheless, since everything is explicitly written, it is very easy to manually
change those hard-coded strings. 
Version 2.0 adds the ability to look up a misspelled word, and changes the 
behavior when the user is presented a selection of words from displaying the 
menu once to always looping back to prompt the user again with the menu.

=head1 PREREQUISITES
requires strict module and Socket module

=head1 SCRIPT CATEGORIES
Web

=cut