Forgive me mine, for it scares me some nights to think it may survive still.

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 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:

• No warnings
• No strict
• No subroutines-everything in main
• Global variables
• No useful comments
• No consistent coding style
• No checking of user input
• Address information (to/from/subject) from hidden tags
• E-mail piped out to the copy of sendmail on the box, and
• It even retained the name it had during testing.

Probably the only saving grace for it was that it did not try to parse its own form input, instead using CGI.pm.

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.