Item8895: Module "CGI" is present but not displayed in the Configure - Web Server Environment - Perl Modules

Some later versions of CGI appear sensitive to the string CGI and don't display it if it's the only content in CGI::th.

Babar and CDot on #foswiki came up with the solution:

 $ perl -MCGI -wle'print CGI::th("CGI")'
<th />
 $ perl -MCGI -wle'print CGI->th("CGI")'
<th>CGI</th>

further consultation with CDot, th expects the first variable to either be a hash, or a string. Calling as ->th passes in $class as the first parameter. Passing in an explicit hash as the first parameter is a better solution.

 $ perl -MCGI -wle'print CGI::th({},"CGI")'
<th>CGI</th>

Also need to look for other calls and correct if necessary.

-- GeorgeClark - 12 Apr 2010

This is a design issue. Since CGI.pm is designed to work as a procedural or OO module, all its functions/methods need to verify if the first parameter is an object (blessed reference), the CGI string (to handle static methods calls, like CGI->p("foo bar")) or anything else.

So, if the first parameter to some CGI.pm function not called as a method can be the string CGI, then the call should be rewritten as a static method call.

Because things like this, I'm considering to replace CGI.pm by CPAN:HTML::Tiny, for example. But it will be another proposal.

-- GilmarSantosJr - 12 Apr 2010

Yeah, CGI is a piece of crap and should really be avoided. Not to mention it's huge for nothing.

Even though I strongly disagree with CDot's statement that CGI::th({},"CGI") is better than CGI->th("CGI") (I think OO, so calling a class method, is better than calling a function from another module), I don't care about the fix

But I agree with Gilmar, it would be nice if we could look into using something else. The only advantage of CGI.pm is that some twisted mind thought it was a good idea to bundle it with perl, so it's now dual-life, but at least available in all the recent perl.

-- OlivierRaginel - 10 May 2010

This appears fixed by Crawford's changes. Changing status to closed.

-- GeorgeClark - 10 May 2010

Commenting is disabled while not logged in