Hi all,

In putting together a CGI script, I get the very strange error, apparently from the BEGIN block:

String found where operator expected at test line 13, near "STDOUT "St
+atus: 413 Request Entity Too Large\r\n""
        (Do you need to predeclare STDOUT?)
syntax error at test line 13, near "print"
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at test line 16.
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What does the error BEGIN not safe mean?

Here is my code ...

#!/usr/bin/perl


sub BEGIN {

    #   Check for oversize request entity
    #
    my $post_maximum = 1047576;
    my $content_length = defined($ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'}) ? $ENV{'CONTE
+NT_LENGTH'} : 0;

    if (($post_maximum > 0) && ($content_length > $post_maximum)) {
        print STDOUT ( $ENV{'SERVER_PROTOCOL'} || 'HTTP/1.0' ), " 413 
+Request entity too large\r\n"
        print STDOUT "Status: 413 Request Entity Too Large\r\n";
        exit 0;
    }
}

sub init {
    local $/ = "\n";

    my $request_method = $ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} if defined $ENV{'REQUE
+ST_METHOD'};
    my $content_length = defined($ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'}) ? $ENV{'CONTE
+NT_LENGTH'} : 0;

    my $query_string;

    METHOD: {

        #   process multi-part POST method
        #
        if (($request_method =~ /^POST$/) &&
            ($ENV{'CONTENT_TYPE'} =~ m!^multipart/form-data!)) {

            #   On the TODO list!

            last METHOD;
        }

        #   process GET or HEAD method
        #
        if ($request_method =~ /^(GET|HEAD)$/) {
            $query_string = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'} if defined $ENV{'QUER
+Y_STRING'};
            $query_string ||= $ENV{'REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING'} if defined
+ $ENV{'REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING'};
            last METHOD;
        }

        #   process POST method
        #
        if ($request_method =~ /^POST$/) {
            if ($content_length > 0) {
                local $^W = 0;
                $query_string = read (STDIN, $query_string, $content_l
+ength, 0);
            }
            $query_string .= (length($query_string) ? '&' : '') . $ENV
+{'QUERY_STRING'} if $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
            last METHOD;
        }


        print STDOUT ( $ENV{'SERVER_PROTOCOL'} || 'HTTP/1.0' ), " 405 
+Method Not Allowed\r\n"
        print STDOUT "Status: 405 Method Not Allowed\r\n";
        exit 0;
    }

    my $results = {};

    if ((defined $query_string) && (length $query_string)) {
        if ($query_string =~ /[&=;]/) {
            my (@pairs) = split /[&;]/, $query_string;
            foreach (@pairs) {
                my ($param, $value) = split '=', $_, 2;
                $value ||= '';
                $param = unescape($param);
                $value = unescape($value);
                push @{$results->{$param}}, $value;
            }
        }
    }

    return $results;
}


sub unescape {
    my ($todecode) = @_;
    return undef unless defined $todecode;
    $todecode =~ tr/+/ /;
    $todecode =~ s/%([\da-fA-F]{2})/chr hex($1)/ge;
    return $todecode;
}
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