Weird things...

[Anonymous Monk]

This is weird.

I have some variables that won't show up in a required file.

Example...

$name = "turd";

require "./turd.pl";

turd.pl is an html document with surrounding print<<ENDHTML; ENDHTML things...

whenever I run the program, the variable $name is never shown, and even though I see the html without the variables, I do see this error (which is repeated 3 times...)

Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) at /turd.pl line 1.

line one contains "print<<ENDHTML;"

The Weird thing in all of this is that if i replace the require statement with exactly what is in the "required" file, everything works fine.

Even though they are not required in this particular subroutine, I have multiple required files in this script, and all of them are working fine. I am at a loss.

Any ideas?

Edit: chipmunk 2001-07-13

[HyperZonk]

Is name initialized in the main routine? If so, you need to qualify its use in loaded modules with main::. Example: in turd.pl, use $main::name in place of $main.

[Anonymous Monk]

correction..

$name="turd";
require "./turd.pl";

line one contains "print< < ENDHTML"

[bikeNomad]

What kind of variable is $name? If it's a lexical (my) variable, it won't be visible in the included file. You could make it a local, or you could eval the contents of the file:

open FH, 'included.pl';
my $text;
{
  local $/ = undef;
  $text = <FH>;
}
close FH;
my $name = 'turd';
eval $text;
die "error in included file: $@" if $@;

[Wookie]

If you want to include settings from an external file - the easiest way I have found to do this is to have the external file like:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$name = 'turd';
$blah = 'sample';

Then in your main program:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use vars qw($name $blah)
require './turd.pl';

That should allow you to read in the variables :)