I was happily hacking away when suddenly one of my modules stopped working with the error 'Can't locate object method "Package" via package "my_module" at my_module.pm line 1.' As an added bonus, mod_perl vomited the calling program into the logs - twice.

Veterans are already smirking because they know what the problem is. Twenty minutes afterwards, I did too. Turns out that the line 

package my_module;

[download]

had been changed to

Package my_module;

[download]

by vi. It turns out that in the version I have, if I am in vi mode mode and press page down, it capitilises the letter under the cursor and then switches to ex mode so that the next page down starts moving me down pages. I'm so disgusted I'm tempted to go and learn Emacs right now, but I'll leave it 'till the morning in case I change my mind :)

Of course I didn't notice the capital letter on 'Package' in the error message because I had never had the error 'Cannot locate object method "package"... ' either.

And people wonder why computer programmers are all pedants...

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

In reply to VI VI VI - the number of the beast by jepri

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