Perl debugger question

[Kathy1]

Hi.

We are looking for a good Perl debugger, and our tech services guru has checked out a couple of them. He has indicated that the debuggers he's looked at (this includes Active Perl, Komodo) do not work if the Perl script is activated from a webpage. The script must be activated from an icon on the desktop or a DOS command.

This seems quite odd to me, as I'm betting most scripts are activated by webpages via the 'submit' command on a standard HTML form - at least in our system 96% of them are web-page activated.

Has anyone else run across this situation, and is there a debugger out there that works with web-page activated Perl scripts?

We are running on an NT server and Windows 98 platforms.

Thanks for your help.

Kathy *:->*

 

[goBoating]

I don't know of a debugger that can reach over onto another server
and check all the dependencies a particular piece of code may have.
But, I have had good luck with a fairly simple strategy.

First, make sure the code is syntactically correct with
#prompt> perl -c yourCode.cgi <return>

Second, if moving the file from a Win box to a *NIX box
make sure to convert your file to UNIX flavored line
endings.
#prompt> dos2unix yourCode.cgi tempFileName <return>
#prompt> mv tempFileName yourCode.cgi <return>

Third, make sure the code is executable by the web daemon
On a *nix box,
#prompt> chmod +x yourCode.cgi <return>

Or, via an ftp client, tell the ftp client to make the code
executable when it is transfered.

Fourth, use a simple sub routine where you would normally use 'die'.
Any time you do anything in the code that requires some
permissions to a file or database connection, etc...., call the
sub on failure.

open(AFILE,&quot;<someInputFile&quot or ooops(&quot;Failed to open someInputFile, $!&quot;

sub ooops
{
my $error = shift;
print &quot;<p>CGI ERROR - $error</p></body></html>\n&quot;;
# you now have your error reported to the browser, now die.
die;
}

HTH




keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo