I despair! no where else to turn. CGI error

m4trix · Jan 3, 2003

I'm trying to edit a perl forum for a friends' company, but before I can do that, I need to get it working on my local server. I'm on winXP running Apache 1.3.27, and the newest version of perl. my CGI scripts work perfectly on my server, when I write them. However, my friend sent me this script, which works fine on his server, but I can't get it to run on mine.

For example, I tried to run cp.cgi, which would configure the script for my server. But when I run it, I get:

Software error:
Can't find string terminator "END" anywhere before EOF at c:\PROGRA~1\APACHE~1\apache\cgi-bin\cp.cgi line 109.

Here is that piece of code:
[tt]
106 } elsif ($in{ubb} eq 'set_initial') {
107 &SetInitial;
108 } else {
109 print<<END;
110 Content-type: text/plain
111
112 Sorry, I can't process ubb=$in{ubb} during an initial setup. Please try again without it.
113 END
114 } # end if
115 exit(0);
116 } # end unless
[/tt]

it looks fine to me, and works in some of my other scripts.
However, if I change it so that it is:
[tt]
print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
print "Sorry, I can't process ubb=$in{ubb} during an initial setup. Please try again without it.\n";
[/tt]

it seems to work, or at least it gives me a different error. like:

Software error:
Can't find string terminator "TheENV" anywhere before EOF at ubb_setup.cgi line 107.

Software error:
[Sat Jan 4 01:30:07 2003] c:\PROGRA~1\APACHE~1\apache\cgi-bin\cp.cgi: Can't find string terminator "TheENV" anywhere before EOF at ubb_setup.cgi line 107. Compilation failed in require at c:\PROGRA~1\APACHE~1\apache\cgi-bin\cp.cgi line 101.

obviously, cp.cgi calls ubb_setup.cgi, so I open that file, and find these lines, which also look fine to me:

[tt]
104 -type => "text/html",
105 );
106
107 print <<TheENV;
108 <html><head><title>UBB.classic: Your Environmental Variables</title></head>
109 <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
110 
111 Your Environmental Variables
112 
113 Use this information to help you figure out your absolute file paths, and
114 other system information.
115 
116 Perl Info: 
117 You are using Perl Version $]
118 
119 Your Environmental Variables:
120 
121 
122 Note: "DOCUMENT_ROOT" shows your absolute path to your root web directory.
123 "SCRIPT_FILENAME" shows you absolute path of your CGI directory.
124 If your SCRIPT_FILENAME shows "/

http://www/whatever/whatever/cgi-bin/cpanel.cgi",

125 your Absolute Path variable for your CGI directory would be
126 "/

http://www/whatever/whatever/cgi-bin".

On some servers this value is
127 called PATH_TRANSLATED.
128 
129 <pre>
130 TheENV
131
132 foreach(sort {$a cmp $b} keys %ENV) {
133 printf("%-25s%s\n", "$_:", UBBCGI::escapeHTML($ENV{$_}));
[/tt]

and so I can fix it by changing each line to it's own print statment.. but that takes a fair amount of time. becuase when I run it again, I get ANOTHER error, and ANOTHER AND ANOTHER... and it seems like an endless amount of fixing those stupid print <<FILEHANDLE; errors. I've tried changing them. usually when I code, I leave them right against the left side, and use quotation marks:

print <<"FILEHANDLE";
blah blah blah
FILEHANDLE

but it still doesn't work for this script. ANY ideas? or do I just take the time one day to change it so it prints each line individually? I'd still like to know why it doesn't work though, when it works on his server

tl66 · Jan 3, 2003

maybe your transfer type is not correct, you should transfer perl script by ASCII,not binary.as we know \n is not same on different os.
you can ask your friend to send it to you again and test ?

tanderso · Jan 4, 2003

Try replacing

Code:

print <<END; 
 ...string... 
 END

with

Code:

print qq~ 
 ...string... 
 ~;

Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

icrf · Jan 4, 2003

Forgive me if this is a dumb observation, but if those line numbers are actually in the perl code, it won't work that way. The line must contain only the print delimiter.

I know, it sounds silly, but I'm throwing it out there just in case. Tom's method should work well in any case. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...but I'm just a C man trying to see the light

m4trix · Jan 4, 2003

tl66 - I'm aware of this

but thanks for pointing it out. It's on my hd, so I don't need to ftp it anyway.

icrf - I added the line numbers myself, because I basically just took a chunk of code out and I wanted readers to have some kind of reference to where it came from.

tanderso - thanks, I'll try that

crackn101 · Jan 5, 2003

Make sure that the END label at line 113 of your code snipet
is flush against the left side of the script.
No spaces or anything else on that line before it.

crackn101

tviman · Jan 6, 2003

Also, make sure that there is a carriage return after END, and preferrably a blank line. There's always a better way...

toolkit · Jan 7, 2003

I reckon tl66 may be on the right track. What editor are you using to edit the script? Some editors automatically change the line terminators to suit the OS, and some stick with whatever line terminators are present in the file sent to you. Try using something like:

http://hexmad.lilacthursday.com/index.php

Cheers, Neil

pheuvel · Jan 15, 2003

According to the perl pages, putting quotes around the first terminator will fix the problem. As in:

print <<'END';

Regards,
Pat

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I despair! no where else to turn. CGI error

m4trix

Vendor

tl66

Programmer

tanderso

IS-IT--Management

icrf

Programmer

m4trix

Vendor

crackn101

Programmer

tviman

Programmer

toolkit

Programmer

pheuvel

IS-IT--Management

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