CGI spilling Perl internals into error log

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

Hi, I'm trying to maintain an update a crufty Perl CGI I've inherited, and it has one behaviour which is really baffling me.

When I run the CGI I'm getting what looks like Perl internals printed to Apache's error_log.

e.g.

SV = RV(0x87a4af0) at 0xbffff530
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (ROK,READONLY)
  RV = 0x87f86a0
SV = RV(0x87a4b3c) at 0x87f876c
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (ROK)
  RV = 0x87f8778
SV = RV(0x88001c0) at 0xbffff2b0
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (ROK,READONLY)
  RV = 0x87f8778

I have no idea why it is doing this. It doesn't seem to be effecting the application, but it is bugging me not to understand it.

Apache is a simple httpd, no mod_perl. The CGI uses DBI, and a few other modules, but nothing all that interesting. I'm not using Devel::Peak or something else that would make me expect to see Perl guts.

Any ideas?

Comment on CGI spilling Perl internals into error log

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Re: CGI spilling Perl internals into error log by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Feb 17, 2002 at 22:00 UTC
Are you serializing some database handle or something else in your code ? /J\	[reply]
Serializing DBI!?!! by kellan (Initiate) on Feb 18, 2002 at 08:03 UTC
Yes, exactly! Way down deep some data structure had a reference to a $dbh, and was getting passed to Storable's clone method. Thank you so much. How did you know?	[reply]
Re: Serializing DBI!?!! by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Feb 18, 2002 at 09:17 UTC
How did you know? Been there, done that, filled up `/var` :) /J\	[reply] [d/l]
Re: CGI spilling Perl internals into error log by traveler (Parson) on Feb 17, 2002 at 23:59 UTC
That looks like output from `Devel::Peek`. I would do a grep for it just in case it is `require`d deep inside the module somewhere. HTH, --traveler	[reply] [d/l] [select]