Perl Begginer

Cool_Hand_Luke · 03-10-2005, 05:42 PM

I am running a fresh install of Mandrake 9.1 with Perl 5.8

All of this was set up automatically. I am just learning and wanted to play around making my own form handler from scratch using the book "Perl and CGI for the World wide Web" From my understanding CGI.PM was supposed to be installed automatically with version 5.04 or higher.

My scripts work when I write simple things without any calls from form variables. I get an error when I add the following line at the top under the shebang line.

use CGI ':standard';

I also get an error when I try and load CGI.pm

Do I need the above modules to accept code with the param function from forms? See the example below:

my $formdata;
$formdata=param('nameinform');
print "Is this the data $formdata";

The HTML file that would run that script doesn;t work. However I can link to the script and get proper output as long as I don't try to use any name values from the form.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Luke

keefaz · 03-10-2005, 07:31 PM

Try ' perldoc CGI ' in command line for more infos

Cool_Hand_Luke · 03-10-2005, 08:02 PM

That does not work...

TheLinuxDuck · 03-10-2005, 11:50 PM

Cool_Hand_Luke:

Firstly, try including CGI w/o the ':standard', as:

Code:

use CGI;

Second, what error does it return? Does it say "No CGI.pm in @INC (list of dirs)"? If so, then it's a safe bet to say that CGI.pm is NOT installed on your system. If it is not installed, then installing it can be done by several methods (using the CPAN module, etc).

Thirdly, in order to access the form data, yes CGI.pm has to be installed and included in the script.

And lastly, as a perl beginner, I would strongly suggest that you always start every perl script as:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use strict; will be your worst enemy and your best friend, because it will force your coding style to a certain standard. It will get you writing better code earlier. This google search will provide you with a plethora of reading material on it's use. use warnings; is also good because it's provides you with somewhat more informative error messages when things do go wrong in your scripts.

And, if you're getting some error in a perl script that you just can't seem to understand, add

Code:

use diagnostics;

to the script's header. This will provide you with a detailed description of the error, and possible generic causes.. however, using it will slow your script down tremendously, and it's not a good idea to leave this included all the time.

Let me finally add that I'm glad to see someone interested in learning perl, and I also hope that you find as much help as needed to keep your interest going and your success rate high! (=

Cool_Hand_Luke · 03-11-2005, 06:31 AM

Great! Thanks for the help I really appreciate it!

I will try this tonight again.

This is sort of a hobby for me. I have taken limited courses in web developement and CISC 101 which was java programming. I find it fun. :-)

Cheers,

Cool Hand...

Cool_Hand_Luke · 03-11-2005, 04:30 PM

OMG It is working Yahoo!!!!!!

I am so excited!! For all of you GURUS!! Let this remind you of how it must have felt when you sucessfully wrote your first program

YYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! !!!

LMAO

Cheers,

Cool Hand...

TheLinuxDuck · 03-11-2005, 04:34 PM

(= Good to hear! Just post if you've any other questions, and hopefully someone will be able to assist.

As for the feeling of the first working code, I typically feel pretty ecstatic when something actually
works like I meant. (= Those are the good days. (=