fluffyvoidwarrior has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks, Using Activestate perl, Apache 2and CGI package. I'm returning variable values from web page form user input. eg - $myvariable = $q->param( "myinput" ); I then test for a null value with eg - if ($myvariable eq ""){ #ie if user didnt fill in field exit; #don't try to work on a null value } Although my scripts work ok I'm filling up my apache error log with drivel like - "...Use of uninitialized value in string eq at ..." It seems that an uninitialised variable is not the same as a null variable. How do I test for an uninitialised variable? I've hunted through quite a lot of big fat perl books to no avail. This seems like an embarrassingly dumb question, sorry. Masters, you are my only hope .... Thanks

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Re: null values
by monarch (Priest) on May 26, 2005 at 08:08 UTC

    This has to be one of the most common initial questions that comes up about perl. 

    if ( defined( $q->param( "myinput" ) ) ) {
    print( $q->param( "myinput" ) );
}

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    or 

    my $value = $q->param( "myinput" );
print( $value ) if ( $value );

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    The above only works if $value is never going to be zero, because zero evaluates to false. A value of undef or zero is false. The following is safer: 

    my $value = $q->param( "myinput" );
print( $value ) if ( defined( $value ) );

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      Thanks People
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Re: null values
by robartes (Priest) on May 26, 2005 at 07:45 UTC
    perldoc -f defined

    CU
    Robartes-

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Re: null values
by polettix (Vicar) on May 26, 2005 at 12:10 UTC
    I sometimes find it useful to define a wrapper function to set a default value: 
    
sub defaulted_param {
   my ($param_name, $default_value) = @_;
   return $default_value unless defined $q->param($param_name);
   return $q->param($param_name);
}

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    (assuming $q is global, of course).

    Flavio (perl -e 'print(scalar(reverse("\nti.xittelop\@oivalf")))')

    Don't fool yourself.
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      For future reference, I believe, if I can remember right, that usually when $q->param($param_name); is used, a person is using mod_perl. In this case, you should always pass $q to the sub as well, otherwise bad things tend to happen (at least they always did for me!).

          -Bryan

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Re: null values
by LanceDeeply (Chaplain) on May 26, 2005 at 17:09 UTC
    no one mentioned my personal favorite: setting a default value using the or operator... 
    $myvariable = $q->param( "myinput" ) || ""; 
if ($myvariable eq "")
{
   # no warnings
}

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