I started learning mod_perl versus regular perl for web applications for
two reasons.
Mod_perl is much faster, but that was only an interest, not quite strong
enough to push the effort, despite seeing many applications that are
horribly slow without it.
When someone said that using mod_perl was an easy way to deal with
having apache chrooted without having to drag all kinds of files inside,
that made my decision.
I have not regretted it. I have learned many details that I could have
overlooked with regular perl. Mod_perl is more unforgiving of not
knowing exactly what my variables are doing and what values they hold
This particular issue has taught me two things.
I am never going to use no warnings 'uninitialized' again. It is too
dangerous to be overlooking possible problems.
It has also taught me that perl itself may leave values in variables
such as $1, even after a server stop and start and first running of a
program. Sounds like an early lesson out of C. Never assume anything is
in fact defined without defining it yourself.
Nope, not a perl guru, yet. But if you keep on thorough pointing out my
every error clearly, I guess that will happen sooner! :)
Thanks
Chris Bennett
