if a Perl script fails perl -c then the server is only going to issue an internal error to your browser.

Just to verify what jsprat is saying:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use CGI ':standard';
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

$i = 6; || $j = 7;
[download]

produces:

Content-type: text/html

<H1>Software error:</H1>
<PRE>syntax error at /tmp/t63 line 6, near &quot;; ||&quot;
Execution of /tmp/t63 aborted due to compilation errors.
</PRE>
<P>
For help, please send mail to this site's webmaster, giving this error
+ message 
and the time and date of the error.

[Tue Aug  5 12:58:07 2003] t63: syntax error at /tmp/t63 line 6, near 
+"; ||"
[Tue Aug  5 12:58:07 2003] t63: Execution of /tmp/t63 aborted due to c
+ompilation errors.
[download]

chriso: Do you see the same problems with this simple script, or does it display the error in the browser as you expect?

I get an internal server error. However, when I look at the server logs, it tells me,

Wed Aug 06 12:56:04 2003 error client 199.67.22.68 syntax error at /var/www/instructor/cgi-bin/test2.cgi line 4, near "; ||"
Wed Aug 06 12:56:04 2003 error client 199.67.22.68 Execution of /var/www/instructor/cgi-bin/test2.cgi aborted due to compilation errors.

So there is some indications, but nothing sent to the browser.

OK.... maybe it is a case of YMMV and depends on the server and its configuration. I was able to verify what you are saying as true on my test apache server at home.

However, in my professional experience what I said in my reply is also true with a lot of servers and server configurations.

---

Peter @ Berghold . Net

Sieze the cow! Bite the day!

Test the code? We don't need to test no stinkin' code! All code posted here is as is where is unless otherwise stated.

Brewer of Belgian style Ales

Could very well be. My professional experience with this is limited to Apache on Linux or BSD. I haven't seen it fail, but a quick search shows lots of others that have.

Maybe some versions of CGI::Carp don't catch it and some do?

Update: Leave it to tye to find more info (Re: How do I get errors printing out to the browser? (bug))