Homework 4 & 5. Stat 540.

• Write a form and perl script that asks the user their name, age, favorite color, favorite type of music, sex, continents the person has been to, and a 5 other questions of your choice. The name should be done as a text field, the music should be done from a list of choices, the continents should be done with radial buttons. The other you can do what ever makes sense. They should be able to reenter the data on the page you print out and then hit a resubmit key or an OK key.

  Once the user has input correct data save this information to a file along with the date and time of the request.

  This piece of code will eventually be the first screen of your mastermind program and will allow you to keep track of who played your master-mind game and how well they did.

• Design a program schematic to display how you think that your mastermind program will work. You can expand on mine, or design your own from scratch. The schematic should indicate the variables that you believe need to be defined, as well as where they will be updated. (Turn this in to class.)

• Work through the skeleton program and schematic that I made available in class. Make sure that you understand the flow of the program.

  The objective of this homework is to construct a working Mastermind program, which will run over the WEB by using the HTTP and CGI protocols.

  Game components

  • The game should use 6 colors in the secret code.
  • The game should offer the user unlimited tries at guessing the code.
  • The game should allow the user to input their guess for the secret code.
  • After each guess, the program should report to the user 2 numbers;
    • 1. The number of colors guessed correctly and in the correct place.
    • 2. The number of colors guessed correctly but in the wrong place.
  • The game should display a game board which shows all previous guesses, and the outcome of each guess.
  • The game should offer the user the ability to quit a game half way through and request the secret code.
  • Outcomes:
    • If the user guesses correctly the program should report this!
    • The user should have the ability to reset a game half way through.

  Deliverables

  • Your program schematic (either emailed or put in my mailbox).
  • Your program, which I should find a link to off of your homepage.
  • The perl code itself (which I can read in your cgi-bin directory).
  • A cvs log of all of the perl programs necessary to run the program. You should do a commit (cvs ci) ever 10 to 15 lines of code you write. Add a comment as to what you are thinking and what you have done since the last commit. (This assumes cvs is working.)

  Considerations

  • Use cookies to store state information.
  • Test your program by throwing some "crazy inputs" at it, to get an idea of its robustness.
  • Make sure that it acts appropriately under the three conditions, win, lose and reset.
  • Suggestion: build the code up slowly. Structure your efforts along the lines of subroutines, state information, program flow, interface.
  • Debugging. This is a pain for CGI programs. Remember that you can always run your Perl script from the command line. You can include copious numbers of print statements in your code to check the status of variables. Check out the simple DEBUG device.

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  Richard Waterman. Fri Feb 5 06:20:05 EST 1999.