CGI::script_name() changed or bug?

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

I'm trying to port some scripts from an old server to a new one and it appears that the functionality of the CGI::script_name() function has changed when running it from the command line.

When running it from a browser session, it works correctly, but I have a number of scripts that run from cron as command-line programs that breaks because CGI::script_name() no longer returns a from when run from the command line.

Is this intentional or a bug, and is there a way to restore the old functionality?

Running the below script from the command line:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use CGI;
print $CGI::VERSION;
print "\n";
print CGI::script_name();
print "\n";
[download]

on the old working server I get:

3.05
/var/www/vhosts/domainname.com/cgi-bin/testcgi.pl
[download]

but on the new version I get:

3.59
    [blank line]
[download]

This is breaking bunches of scripts. Is there a way to enable the old functionality? Thanks!

Comment on CGI::script_name() changed or bug? Select or Download Code

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Re: CGI::script_name() changed or bug? by GrandFather (Saint) on Apr 29, 2012 at 04:49 UTC
CGI::script_name expects the CGI environment variable SCRIPT_NAME to contain the name of the notional script being executed. Running in the context of a web server such as Apache the variable is set by the calling code. However if you are running the script in the context of a cron job then very likely SCRIPT_NAME is not being set. You could fix this by having the cron job run a bash script that sets SCRIPT_NAME before calling your Perl script. True laziness is hard work	[reply]
Re: CGI::script_name() changed or bug? by NetWallah (Canon) on Apr 29, 2012 at 15:38 UTC
To complete the story on GrandFather's explanation, the older 3.05 version of CGI.pm provided the script name this way: `sub script_name { return $ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'} if defined($ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}); # These are for debugging return "/$0" unless $0=~/^\//; return $0; }` [download] The 'debugging' code is not present in the 3.59 version - it relies exclusively on the environment variable. I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it. -SNL	[reply] [d/l]