note
atcroft
<p>Forgive me mine, for it scares me some nights to think it may survive still.
<p>The one that scares me the most thinking about it was a script I wrote about 4-5 years ago (well before I knew of the [http://www.perlmonks.org/|Monastery]). At the time, a gentleman who did web design asked if I could write a replacement for CGI he used to send submitted web form input to a site's owner via email. (The CGI he had previously used was a compiled binary, and would not work on the new platform he was moving to.) The list of scary features (that I can recall) included:<ul>
<li>No warnings</li>
<li>No strict</li>
<li>No subroutines-everything in main</li>
<li>Global variables</li>
<li>No useful comments</li>
<li>No consistent coding style</li>
<li>No checking of user input</li>
<li>Address information (to/from/subject) from hidden tags</li>
<li>E-mail piped out to the copy of sendmail on the box, and</li>
<li>It even retained the name it had during testing.</li>
</ul>
<p>Probably the only saving grace for it was that it did not try to parse its own form input, instead using [cpan://CGI.pm].
<p>While I do not yet know the proper pentience for that monstrosity (or even if it still exists), I think the note it placed against my karma may take some time still to requite.
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