[sf-perl] Can't use an undefined value as filehandle reference

[Bill Moseley]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 01:09:46PM -0700, Vicki Brown wrote:
> No error with newer Perl (5.8.5 on my desktop).

Because in 5.8

    If FILEHANDLE is an undefined scalar variable (or array or hash element) the vari-
    able is assigned a reference to a new anonymous filehandle

I doubt that's true in 5.005.


> 
> Here's the relevant code.  The error is on line 5 in the example.
> 
>      #!/usr/bin/perl
> 
>      $szForm = "/www/private/nonexistent.txt";
> 
>      DisplayError ("tmail: template form [$szForm] could not be opened")
>        if (!open ($file, "<$szForm"));  # This line faults

That script starts out like:

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n";

not a good sign.  use strict might be fun.

Why not rewrite as:

    die "tmail: template form [$szForm] could not be opened: $!"
        unless open FORM, "<$szForm";


Really, I'd dump that script.

-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org