CPAN-Forum -- problem with "Use of uninitialized value"

taint has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Greetings, I thought I'd take a look at CPAN-Forum. I downloaded the module/package, inspected, then installed the dependencies, and finally built, tested, and installed it. Everything went as expected. However, I seem to be having troubles with hosting it in a sub-directory within the web site's document root "/". While it does attempt to set the (it's) DOCROOT (ROOT) when it initializes, it doesn't appear to stick. Anyway, The following error might have something to do with it:

Use of uninitialized value $ENV{"PATH_INFO"} in pattern match (m//) at
+ Forum.pm line 674
[download]

The line in question (with fuller context):

  if (not $rm or $rm eq "home") {
        if ($ENV{PATH_INFO} =~m{^/   # Line 674
            ([^/]+)        # first word till after the first /
            (?:/(.*))?     # the rest, after the (optional) second /
             }x) {
         my $newrm = $1;
         my $params = $2 || "";
         if (grep {$newrm eq $_} @urls) {
         my @params = split /\//, $params;
            $self->param(path_parameters => @params ? \@params : []);
            $rm = $newrm;
            $self->prerun_mode($rm);
            } elsif ($ENV{PATH_INFO} eq "/cgi/index.pl") {
            # TODO this is temporary to avoid unnecessary warnings
            } else {
              warn "Invalid PATH_INFO: $ENV{PATH_INFO}";
              # shall I make more noise ? 
            }
       }

  }
[download]

While I could imagine picking an unlikely to be used name, and declare/assign it to ($ENV{PATH_INFO}...) It seems that that environment variable should already exist -- I haven't had trouble(s) in the past with it.

Any helpful suggestions, greatly appreciated.

Thank you for all your time, and consideration.

--chris

#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
use perl::always;
my $perl_version = "5.12.5";
print $perl_version;

Comment on CPAN-Forum -- problem with "Use of uninitialized value" Select or Download Code

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Re: CPAN-Forum -- problem with "Use of uninitialized value" by taint (Chaplain) on Oct 01, 2013 at 23:04 UTC
OK. Further reading seems to indicate this is a known issue. From: http://search.cpan.org/~szabgab/CPAN-Forum-0.11/lib/CPAN/Forum.pm#TODO... Shlomi: The Forum uses cgiapp_prerun to set the mode according to the PATH_INFO instead of using a mode_param code-reference. This causes a lot of warnings in the logs, and doesn't really belong in cgiapp_prerun. It cannot be hosted on a URL except for its own virtual host, as it uses absolute URLs. ("/login/", "/register/", etc.) A better idea would be to track the path that the web-server gives (it's in one of the environment variables) and then to construct a /cpan-forum/login/ /cpan-forum/register/ etc. path. (or use relative URLs). Anyone care to venture a solution, or avenue I could travel to allow this to live one level deeper that the web site's document root -- how I might "pin" `cpan-forum` ahead of the current links? Thank you for all your time, and consideration. --chris #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw use perl::always; my $perl_version = "5.12.5"; print $perl_version;	[reply]
Re^2: CPAN-Forum -- problem with "Use of uninitialized value" by taint (Chaplain) on Oct 02, 2013 at 00:38 UTC
OK. Still trying to work this out... Would something like this: `if ($self->query->url_param($self->mode_param)) {` work? Yea, I know -- I don't know, did you try it? I would, but don't know how to introduce it properly. Sorry. Thank you for all your time, and consideration. --chris #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw use perl::always; my $perl_version = "5.12.5"; print $perl_version;	[reply] [d/l]