a study aid for the Linux+ exam: perlreadsome (Man Pages)

While I was studying for my Linux+ exam I was unable to
find a utility to cycle through all the administrative
man pages on my computer. I wrote the script below for
this purpose.

At some point I may put it up on sourceforge (by that
time it might even work on a non-ubuntu linux computer)
, but for now I just wanted it off of my eee pc before
I blow it away and install Ubuntu 8.04 on it.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Perl Read Some (Man Pages) version 0.01
#
# this script was written by sam levine (hn darkscyon dn 
# gmail tld com).
# it come with NO WARRANTY at all. it is licensed 
# under the GPL (Gnu Public License)
# I am a noob programmer. this may make your computer 
# explode. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
# 
# what this script is designed to do:
# Enable you to study man pages.
#
# while I was studying for my Linux+ test I read man 
# pages a lot to prepare.
# doing so was a pain in the arse. I decided to write 
# this script for fun,
# and hopefully to help other people prepare for the 
# test (this may be helpful for
# the LPIC tests as well.

# 
#@pages = qw[ man ls ping fdisk ifconfig ];
print "create the manlist? (press y then enter)
\n"; # this creates the list of pages to read
 chomp($wait = <STDIN>);
 if ( $wait eq 'y' ) {
 open MANLIST, "> manlist.sav"; # 
# this overwrites any file named manlist.sav in the 
# same folder as the script.
 select MANLIST;
 print ""; #clear manlist.sav
 close MANLIST;
 select STDOUT;
 print "cleared the manlist.sav file\n"; 
# user feedback is important


 @input = `ls /usr/share/man/man8/`;  # create an 
# array with all the admin man pages
      # need to determine the location of this 
# and make it portable.

 foreach (@input) {
  s/[\.]+.+$//; 
# remove everything after the . in the file name
  open MANLIST, ">> manlist.sav";
  select MANLIST;
  print; # add the page to the file
  close MANLIST;
  select STDOUT;
 }
 print "Just made the manlist.sav file. 
Press Enter to continue\n"; # I love feedback ;)
 chomp($wait = <STDIN>); 
}

open MANLIST, "manlist.sav";

foreach $item (<MANLIST>) {
 push(@pages, $item); # create an array with all 
the pages in the manlist.sav file
 }

# print "$pages[1]\n";
# print "$pages[2]\n";
# print "$pages[ -1 ]\n";

#$page = 'man';
foreach $page (@pages) {
 #$maning = `man $page`;
 system "man $page"; # read the man page
 #print $maning;
 push(@pages, $page); 
# copy the first item to the last item
 shift @pages; # remove the first item
 print "\nCare to quit? 
please press q then enter\n";
 chomp($wait = <STDIN>);
 if ( $wait eq 'q' ) 
   {
   print "saving the manlist\n";
   open MANLIST, ">manlist.sav";
   select MANLIST;
   print ""; # clear manlist.sav
   open MANLIST, ">>manlist.sav";
   select MANLIST;
   # recreate the manlist.sav file with the new organized list of pages
   foreach $page (@pages) {
    print $page;
   }
   close MANLIST;
   select STDOUT;
   last;
 }
 
}