Community Add-ons & Extras

Version: 1.0 (December 15, 1995)

Converts a Free For All link page into a database format suitable for the Random Link Generator.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# make_list.pl - Convert FFA links to Random Link database
# Usage: perl make_list.pl links.html > urls.txt

use strict;
use warnings;

my $input_file = shift || 'links.html';

open(my $fh, '<', $input_file) or die "Cannot open $input_file: $!";

while (my $line = <$fh>) {
    # Extract URLs from anchor tags
    while ($line =~ /href\s*=\s*["']?([^"'\s>]+)/gi) {
        my $url = $1;
        # Skip internal links
        next if $url =~ /^#/;
        next if $url =~ /^mailto:/i;
        print "$url\n";
    }
}

close($fh);

Author: Usama Wazeer

Language: C

Automatically removes duplicate links from your links.html file. Reports all duplicate URLs and creates a clean output file.

Modern PHP Equivalent:

<?php
// Remove duplicate links from HTML file
function removeDuplicateLinks($inputFile, $outputFile) {
    $content = file_get_contents($inputFile);
    $urls = [];
    $duplicates = [];
    $lineNum = 0;

    $lines = explode("\n", $content);
    $cleanLines = [];

    foreach ($lines as $line) {
        $lineNum++;

        // Check for URLs in this line
        if (preg_match_all('/href\s*=\s*["\']?([^"\'>\s]+)/i', $line, $matches)) {
            foreach ($matches[1] as $url) {
                $normalizedUrl = strtolower(trim($url));

                if (isset($urls[$normalizedUrl])) {
                    $duplicates[] = [
                        'url' => $url,
                        'first_line' => $urls[$normalizedUrl],
                        'duplicate_line' => $lineNum
                    ];
                    continue 2; // Skip this entire line
                }

                $urls[$normalizedUrl] = $lineNum;
            }
        }

        $cleanLines[] = $line;
    }

    // Write clean file
    file_put_contents($outputFile, implode("\n", $cleanLines));

    // Report duplicates
    if (!empty($duplicates)) {
        echo "Found " . count($duplicates) . " duplicate URLs:\n";
        foreach ($duplicates as $dup) {
            echo "  {$dup['url']} - First: line {$dup['first_line']}, Duplicate: line {$dup['duplicate_line']}\n";
        }
    }

    return count($duplicates);
}

// Usage
removeDuplicateLinks('links.html', 'links_clean.html');
?>

Author: Jon Wichmann Hansen

Converts Netscape Navigator 1.2 - 2.0 beta bookmark files into a format readable by the Random Link Generator.

Modern JavaScript Equivalent:

// Convert browser bookmarks (HTML) to various formats
class BookmarkConverter {
    constructor(htmlContent) {
        this.parser = new DOMParser();
        this.doc = this.parser.parseFromString(htmlContent, 'text/html');
        this.bookmarks = [];
        this.parseBookmarks(this.doc.body);
    }

    parseBookmarks(element, folder = 'root') {
        const links = element.querySelectorAll('a');

        links.forEach(link => {
            if (link.href && !link.href.startsWith('javascript:')) {
                this.bookmarks.push({
                    title: link.textContent.trim(),
                    url: link.href,
                    folder: folder,
                    addDate: link.getAttribute('add_date'),
                    icon: link.getAttribute('icon')
                });
            }
        });

        // Parse folders
        const folders = element.querySelectorAll('h3');
        folders.forEach(h3 => {
            const folderName = h3.textContent.trim();
            const dl = h3.nextElementSibling;
            if (dl && dl.tagName === 'DL') {
                this.parseBookmarks(dl, folderName);
            }
        });
    }

    toRandomLinkFormat() {
        // Format: URL|Title (pipe-delimited)
        return this.bookmarks
            .map(b => `${b.url}|${b.title}`)
            .join('\n');
    }

    toJSON() {
        return JSON.stringify(this.bookmarks, null, 2);
    }

    toCSV() {
        const header = 'Title,URL,Folder\n';
        const rows = this.bookmarks
            .map(b => `"${b.title.replace(/"/g, '""')}","${b.url}","${b.folder}"`)
            .join('\n');
        return header + rows;
    }
}

// Usage with file input
document.getElementById('bookmarkFile').addEventListener('change', async (e) => {
    const file = e.target.files[0];
    const content = await file.text();

    const converter = new BookmarkConverter(content);

    console.log('Random Link Format:');
    console.log(converter.toRandomLinkFormat());

    console.log('\nJSON Format:');
    console.log(converter.toJSON());
});

While Perl is still available on most servers, using these legacy scripts is not recommended due to security vulnerabilities. The original scripts were written before modern security practices like input validation, SQL injection prevention, and XSS protection were standard. We recommend using modern alternatives or rewriting the functionality with current security best practices.

BFormMail added three key features: automatic courtesy reply emails sent to visitors after form submission, the ability to append form data to a flat-file database for record keeping, and integration with fax-to-email services for offline notification. These features addressed common business needs that the basic FormMail didn't handle.

WWWBoard was extremely popular as one of the first web-based discussion systems. As communities grew, they needed features like search, email notifications, spam blocking, and multi-board support. Craig D. Horton at DBASICS recognized these needs and created a full set of add-ons that became popular for serious WWWBoard sites.

These scripts used flat-file storage, typically text files with one subscriber email per line. For digests, a cron job would run daily, read the day's posts from the message files, compile them into a single email, and send to the subscriber list. While simple, this approach worked well for smaller communities but didn't scale efficiently.

Modern forum software like phpBB, Discourse, or Flarum includes all these features built-in: email notifications, digests, search, user management, and spam prevention. For custom implementations, frameworks like Laravel (PHP), Django (Python), or Rails (Ruby) provide the tools to build these features with proper security, scalability, and real-time capabilities via WebSockets.

In the mid-1990s, C programs were often used for performance-critical tasks. Processing large HTML files to find duplicates was faster in compiled C than interpreted Perl, especially on the limited hardware of the era. Today, this task can be easily handled by scripting languages, and most systems can process millions of URLs in seconds.

The Script Archive is maintained as a historical resource and educational reference. While we don't accept new script submissions, the spirit of open source contribution lives on through platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and npm. You can share your modern scripts there and contribute to the thousands of open source projects that continue the tradition of free, community-developed software.