[wellylug] Perl Help

[Grant McLean]

On Mon, 2004-09-13 at 12:23, Chris Hodgetts wrote:
> I added the or die "$!"; and it is now working...
> 
> can you explain please?

I wish I could :-)

The reason I suggested adding that to the end is because it
would cause the script to stop at the point of the failure
rather than at some later point as a side effect of the 
failure.  The $! special variable expands to the last error.

Adding 'or die ...' should not cause it to start working.
Are you sure you didn't change anything else?

More notes below...

> On Mon, 2004-09-13 at 12:16, Chris Hodgetts wrote:
> > This may give more indication
> > 
> > if ($passed <1)
> >         {
> > 
> >         my
> > $smtp=Net::SMTP->new('127.0.0.1',(Hello='thismachine.thatdomain.foo.nz'));

This looks wrong.  The Hello should be followed by => rather 
than =.  There is also no need for the extra parentheses.

  my $relay = '127.0.0.1';
  my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($relay, Hello =>
'thismachine.thatdomain.foo.nz') or die "$relay: $!";

I'd omit the Hello bit altogether unless your SMTP server demands it:

  my $relay = '127.0.0.1';
  my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($relay) or die "$relay: $!";

> >         $smtp->mail("firstname.lastname\@somedomain.foo.nz");

This is also missing error handling.  I would be inclined to write 
it as:

  $smtp->mail("firstname.lastname\@somedomain.foo.nz")
    or die "\$smtp->mail(): " . $smtp->message();

Same goes for all the following message calls.

> >         $smtp->to("firstname.lastname\@somedomain.foo.nz");
> >         $smtp->data();
> >         $smtp->datasend("To: firstname.lastname\@somedomain.foo.nz\n");
> >         $smtp->datasend("Date: $thisday, $thisdate $thismonth $thisyear
> > $hour:$min\n");
> >         $smtp->datasend("Subject: Server5 Error Report $timestamp\n\n");
> >         $smtp->datasend("Error Report:\n$errorDescription");
> >         $smtp->dataend();
> >         $smtp->quit();
> > 
> > 
> > The guy who wrote this script has since left the company, and before he
> > left we migrated it over to another box, and it has never worked, and he
> > didnt care...
> > 
> > On Mon, 2004-09-13 at 11:11, Grant McLean wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2004-09-13 at 10:44, Chris Hodgetts wrote:
> > > > Hello, 
> > > > 
> > > > I am trying to use perl mail modules, and I think I have installed the
> > > > correct ones, but clearly not, because I am getting the following error:
> > > > 
> > > > Can't call method "mail" on an undefined value at
> > > > /home/test/serv5/testS5.pl line 59. 
> > > > 
> > > > Debian Unstable is the distro I am using, can anyone let me know what
> > > > packages "Should" be installed for this to work?
> > > 
> > > Hmm, that message doesn't give us much to go on and it certainly
> > > doesn't imply that the cause is a missing package.
> > > 
> > > Presumably line 59 of the script has something like this:
> > > 
> > >   $some_var->mail('some arguments');
> > > 
> > > The error message is telling us that the variable ($some_var in the
> > > example above) is empty when the script expects it to contain an
> > > object of some sort.  This in turn implies that an earlier line in
> > > the script attempted to create an object, perhaps like this:
> > > 
> > >   $some_var = Net::SMTP->new('stmp.some.domain');
> > > 
> > > And that line is failing for some reason.  A better way to write that
> > > line would have been:
> > > 
> > >   $some_var = Net::SMTP->new('stmp.some.domain') or die "$!";
> > > 
> > > That way you'd get an error indication at the time of the actual
> > > failure rather than later on.
> > > 
> > > My examples assume the Net::SMTP module was being used.  This is part
> > > of the core Perl distribution.  In your case, it could well be a 
> > > completely different module - typically included near the start of
> > > the script with a line like this:
> > > 
> > >   use Net::SMTP;
> > > 
> > > Cheers
> > > Grant
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
>