I have a question regarding use of a package's DATA filehandle under mod_perl.
I keep bits of HTML in the __DATA__ area of my modules to keep them uncluttered. I began to notice that for a module loaded at server startup and kept alive (because it was a content handler), I had no problems reading DATA and keeping the data. However, objects created and destroyed with each request showed erratic behavior; after a few successful reads from DATA, it began to fail.
I figured that it reads DATA in the first child process, but fails in the second and thereafter because the file pointer is at the end of __DATA__. I worked around this by storing DATA's position in a package-level global variable:
$pos = tell DATA unless $pos; { local $/; seek DATA, $pos, 0; $data = <DATA>; }
Is my analysis correct and is there a better solution?
yes, it is correct. __DATA__ is just a filehandle, so if you move the fh pointer you need to restore it if you want to re-use it in a persistent environment. Your solution is the only one that I know of.
We ought to document it. Though I'd separate the reset and the use of it:
# reset DATA fh $pos ||= tell DATA; seek DATA, $pos, 0; ... # use it... $data = <DATA>;
__________________________________________________________________ Stas Bekman JAm_pH ------> Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com
-- Report problems: http://perl.apache.org/bugs/ Mail list info: http://perl.apache.org/maillist/modperl.html List etiquette: http://perl.apache.org/maillist/email-etiquette.html
