I'm sorry not to have pointed out, I didn't just take the script above and try to run it as a CGI.

I printed a valid header and used CGI::Carp and that didn't help. It still died silently at the line noted.

Here's a script which works in the command-line and not in the browser:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
print "Content-type:text/plain\n\n";
require Mac::AppleScript::Glue;
print "started\n";
my $BB = new Mac::AppleScript::Glue::Application('BBEdit')
  || die "$!";
print "success creating Applescript Glue App object\n";
my $results = $BB->check_syntax(file =>
'path:to:file')
  || die "$!";
print "success checking syntax\n";
[download]

It gets as far as the first success message, and then, if the file exists, just stops.

If I try it on a file which doesn't exist, then yes, I get a failure from AppleScript and CGI::Carp does its thing. But if there is a file at that location, then it just stops.

What can I investigate in terms of permissions?