I have a line in a script that looks like this: 

opendir(DIR, $Path->{'real'});

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This call returns false. The value of $Path->{'real'} is defined by a module that gets the value from a conf file. If I print out the value I get the following: 

/usr/

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This directory of course exists, so the following code returns true: 

opendir(DIR, "/usr/");

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Strangely, so does this code: 

$Path->{'real'} = "/usr/";
opendir(DIR, $Path->{'real'});

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This led me to think $Path->{'real'} was tainted and therefore not usable in the opendir call, however it still doesn't work if I untaint it like so: 

$Path->{'real'} =~ /(.*)/;
$Path->{'real'} = $1;
opendir(DIR, $Path->{'real'});

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This code is a functioning part of mozilla.org's installation of LXR running on a Solaris box with perl 5.004. I am trying to get it working on my own RedHat Linux 7.0 machine running 5.6.1. What could be going wrong here?

In reply to why would opendir fail? by Anonymous Monk

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