I still get
Global symbol "$var" requires explicit package name
at /usr/local/apache/htdocs/cgi-bin/debug.cgi line 13.
Global symbol "$var" requires explicit package name
at /usr/local/apache/htdocs/cgi-bin/debug.cgi line 14.
Execution of /usr/local/apache/htdocs/cgi-bin/debug.cgi
aborted due to compilation errors.

appearing in my apache error log rather than my browser

my question is more out of curiosity than necessity.