Below is a link to my "entry" for the Recruitmax ColdFusion Coding Challenge. This website currently runs ColdFusion 6, so there are not v7 tags or functions. Banged this out in about 45 minutes, but, as usual, I always concentrate on presentation, too. There a few things I would do differently given more time, but this does seem to work...and work pretty quick. The ReplaceNoCase functions should be turned into some sort of RegEx, but that's not my forte.

Click here to view my entry...

<CFINVOKE> vs. CFObject()
--(link coming soon)

Dynamic Checkbox Management
--(link coming soon)

Within a UDF and a <CFFUNCTION> you must use the VAR keyword to create variables as private and encapsulated within that function. If you don't do this, it is possible that the variables you think are private and protected are actually changed in other function calls within the top-level function. A way around this would be to define a single variable of type structure and then reference only named keys within that structure just as you would other variables except that each variable is prefixed by the name of your structure. Here's an example:

<CFFUNCTION name="combineName" returnType="string">
<CFSET var x = StructNew() />
<CFSET x.firstName = "Will" />
<CFSET x.lastName = "Belden" />
<CFSET x.retVal = x.firstName & " " & x.lastName />
<CFRETURN x.retVal />
</CFFUNCTION>

As long as you prefix any variable you define with "x." (and having defined "x" as a var'ed structure at the top of your function) you'll never need to worry about overrunning your variables with outside values or overwriting outside values with those intended only for your function.