Problems with recent CGI.pm

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

I am using $Cgi->popup_menu and reading values from a text file. This worked well until recently on updated cpanel versions (with presumingly updated CGI.pm):

$Cgi->popup_menu("convert_links_to_friendly", \@label,
$CONFIG{convert_links_to_friendly}, \%LABEL);
[download]

If $CONFIG{convert_links_to_friendly} is 1, it still works well:

<select name="convert_links_to_friendly" >
<option selected="selected" value="1">Yes</option>
<option value="0">No</option>
</select>
[download]

however if $CONFIG{convert_links_to_friendly} is 0, now it prints:

<select name="convert_links_to_friendly">
<option value="1">Yes</option>
<option value="0">No</option>
</select>
[download]

while I need it to print (which is still working OK on older servers but not working OK on recently updated cpanel servers since 2-3 months):

<select name="convert_links_to_friendly">
<option value="1">Yes</option>
<option selected="selected" value="0">No</option>
</select>
[download]

Do you have any ideas on what could have caused this behaviour?

Comment on Problems with recent CGI.pm Select or Download Code

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Re: Problems with recent CGI.pm by almut (Canon) on Aug 05, 2008 at 15:40 UTC
It's line 2454 in CGI.pm (v3.39): `} elsif ($default) {` [download] which makes `$default` values of zero (=false) be ignored. (`$default` is where your `$CONFIG{convert_links_to_friendly}` value ends up in.) The fix would apparently be `} elsif (defined $default) {` [download] but I can't tell for sure whether that would maybe break something else (don't think so), or what the motivation for not using `defined` might have been...	[reply] [d/l] [select]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re: Problems with recent CGI.pm
by almut (Canon) on Aug 05, 2008 at 15:40 UTC

It's line 2454 in CGI.pm (v3.39):

    } elsif ($default) {
[download]

which makes $default values of zero (=false) be ignored. ($default is where your $CONFIG{convert_links_to_friendly} value ends up in.)

The fix would apparently be

    } elsif (defined $default) {
[download]

but I can't tell for sure whether that would maybe break something else (don't think so), or what the motivation for not using defined might have been...

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]