General discussion of modifying the wwwboard script isn't really on topic for Earthwaves.

However, suggestions to improvements specific to Earthwaves are most welcome. You and others have made some good suggestions I'd like to try some day. But, it will take some time as my Perl skills develop.

It might be better for you to contact the NMS project regarding updates to the code for general use, since they are the current maintainers of the most up-to-date version of the script.

It was nice to see the scripts have been updated a bit. I tried out the new search function but unfortunately it still has the same problem as the current script - too slow. The problem is simply the sheer number of messages on this forum. Perl simply does not run fast enough to scan through all those messages before the server assumes the script is hung up (at least five minutes).

I'm still working on it, though. I tried another script which pre-indexes the files for faster searches, but the same problem occurs with the indexing script. It's too slow to index all 38,000+ files before being canceled by the server.

BTW, writing code in another language to be translated to Perl later is problematic. It's one thing if the Perl program is intended as a standalone executable like your etdprog.exe, but it's an entirely different matter (as you are experiencing) for writing Perl to run as a cgi code on a web server. The needs and methods are very different and writing in another language would require that language to also already be working in a server environment. But then if it was, what would be the point of translating it to Perl?

Brian