As tachyon says, the "dienice" function is a function which makes your errors look prettier than the standard "internal error" page. They have become popular largely thru their use in a number of beginners' CGI books.

However, there's one important point to note with a "dienice" routine. tachyon's version does the right thing by simply displaying a vague error message to the user, but many versions from books display the complete error message to the user. This is generally a bad idea. Giving actual Perl error messages to users should be avoided. It will probably confuse your users and it gives too much information to the black-hats.

The generic "internal server error" page is the way it is for a very good reason. It gives the user all the information that is necessary. The important thing is to write the real error message into the web server error log where it belongs so the webmaster can see it.

For this reason, I very rarely use a "dienice" function, prefering to write a custom 500 error page which mirrors the look and feel of the web site.

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

In reply to Re: What is dienice??? by davorg
in thread What is dienice??? by Anonymous Monk

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