SPUG: SDBM & CGI request for information and pointers

Michael R. Wolf MichaelRWolf at att.net
Wed Oct 6 03:05:07 CDT 2004


I got this question from a friend of mine, wondering where he could post 
such a question.  I don't know the answers.  Do you?

Reply to the list or to me -- I'll get the answers back to him.

On behalf of my friend -- thanks!

Michael Wolf

============================

I've got two Perl questions maybe you can help with:

1 - Where can I learn more about the Perl "sdbm" database - the one that ties
hashes to a file? I've discovered that it's easily corruptable by assigning a
large (e.g., 1000-byte) value to a key. But I have no idea why, or what
conditions create that limit. I've tried trying to find out what the limit is
empirically, but it seems to depend on parameters I don't know about, because
what works one time may not work the next. Is there real documentation for 
this?
What I find on my system is very scant. (FYI: I'm required to "use POSIX" and
"use SDBM_File" to use this feature.) Is there a Perl forum or discussion group
that covers this (for people at my modest level of expertise)?

2. In order to get any kind of error return at all for the above problem I have
to have this active:

    use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser'; #During testing only

But I'm told this is a security problem (I don't know why). Is there any way to
issue this "use", then rescind it when I'm past where the problem might be?


Michael R. Wolf
     All mammals learn by playing!
         MichaelRWolf at att.net



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