Programming Perl 101
Now, let's say you want to display some text in case someone presses the second button. Can Perl handle this? Heck yeah…enter this:
elsif ($action eq "2") {
print "Well, odds are you clicked the second button…";
}
The above code is fairly self-explanatory. It's like the "if" statement in every way, except we have an "els" in front of the "if." This, turned into a sentence, would read "Else if." This is telling the script that if the previous "if" statement is false (IE: if the equals condition is not met), then take a look at this statement, and if it equals "true" (if the $action variable equals 2), then process the code inside.
Creating a statement to display text if the user presses the third button is almost exactly the same:
elsif ($action eq "3") {
print "Who woulda thought? You pressed the third button!";
}
This is all well and good so far, but we need to have some sort of fail-safe. Using the code so far, a message will be displayed no matter which of the three buttons is pressed. But what if something else happens. For examples: what if the $action variable (nevermind the reason) equals something other than 1, 2, or 3?
Have no fear, there is a statement for this as well:
else {
print "Sorry, there is no page available for that number.";
}
A-ha! We can add an "if" statement, two "else-if" statements, and now an "else" statement. The "else" statement is a last resort…if NONE of the first three conditions are met, the else statement is processed. It basically says "if none of the above statements need to be processed, process me." This makes sure that a message is displayed no matter what the $action variable equals.
Whew - have you learned enough yet? I didn't think so…keep reading.
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