Testing Perl Programs

Use the compiler -w switch to warn about identifiers that are referenced only once, uninitialized scalars, redefined subroutines, undefined file handles, probable confusion of "==" and "eq", and other things. This can be coded in the magic cookie first line:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

As you write your program, put in print statements to display variables as you proceed. Comment "#" them out when you feel you don't need to see their output.

CGI scripts require some special attention in testing.

MU's "showme" and "SGI" Web servers (http://www.missouri.edu and http://www.cclabs.missouri.edu) use the Apache "sucgi" facility. This causes CGI programs stored under your directory ~/www/ with file name ending ".cgi" to execute as your own ID. On some other Web server the script does not execute under your login ID! It executes under the ID of the Web server, typically as user "nobody".

Thus a script that works at the command line may fail under the Web server because:

# The path for executables or Perl library might be inappropriate. Print $ENV{'PATH'} and @INC to see if there's a difference. Fix it with Perl statements like:

$ENV{'PATH'} .= ':~myid/bin:~myid/cgibin';
push @INC,'~myid/lib/perl';

# File permissions give your ID access don't give the Web server appropriate access.