Getting searching to work

Peter Flynn (pflynn@curia.ucc.ie)
Wed, 27 Jan 93 16:33:38 GMT

How is it best to add a simple search facility to a httpd server?
Or, better put, if a user wends hir way into one of my html menus,
is there a simple addition I can make that will add a search capability?
What I'd like is something like:

<dl>
<dt><a name=dub href="dubliners.html">Dubliners<dd>by James Joyce
<dt><a name=ulysses href="ulysses.html">Ulysses<dd>by James Joyce
[etc]
<dt><a name=something href=somepointer>Search<dd>the above texts for
a name or keyword
</dl>

Can a href point to a script or binary which will pipe its output back
to httpd and return the user to the same menu? Can that script be as
simple as, say, "grep '$1' * >somewhere" ? Or (as we're using PAT),
something like "pat something; $1 >somewhere" and get httpd to pass
the contents of the "name" aatribute into the "something" argument?
Or do I need another piece of already-httpd-enmeshed software? What
are people using for the Bible search that is available thru WWW?

///Peter