Fatal error only in debug modus

[Ben Win Lue]

O Wise Ones!

I am a bit at a loss. I'm using a linux test system together with some co-workers. The perl debugger is only used by me and I'm using it only now and then. So nobody recognized when the debugger ceased to work.

Any perl -d call will result in:

Can't modify constant item in scalar assignment at xxxx.pl line 0, nea
+r "0;"
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted.

Even things like

perl -d -e 'print "X"'

throw this error message. Larger perl scripts, too. The error is always in line 0.
Without -d everything workes fine.

BTW: perl -v is printing:

This is perl, v5.8.8 built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi

Thanks for any hint!

[TomDLux]

If you make a syntax error in print "X", for example leaving out one of the quotes, it is reported as an error in line 1. So line 0 errors must occur before getting to the expression to evaluate.

I would check if you have aliased the perl command in some way.

$ alias perl
perl: alias not found

But you may find it defined to something, possibly involving -e'0=1'.

[Argel]

Okay, I'll bite --- why would someone want to alias it like that? An obfuscated way to prevent users from running Perl? Practical joke (that would be a good one, might have to remember this one for April 1st)?

[Ben Win Lue]

Thank you, brethren,
for at least having a look at my problem.

But noboday played an Aprils fool on me, there is no alias. Anyway, with that alias the error should occur without "-d" switch, too.

Well, I already gave up looking for the reason of the debugging error and I'm spicing my beautiful code with nasty log prints. This way I might not need the debugger.

Cheers and happy new year!