ML/Twig.pm did not return a true value

[matth]

Hi everybody, I have another question. What, in a nutshell, does the following error message mean (beyond the obvious) and is there an easy way of overcoming this?

bash-2.05$ perl perl_monks_B.pl
XML/Twig.pm did not return a true value at perl_monks_B.pl line 4.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at perl_monks_B.pl line 4.

[myocom]

In short, it sounds like you have a bad version of XML::Twig, and you should grab it from CPAN and reinstall it.

The long answer is that perl modules must end with a true value (most modules simply put 1; at the end), but the XML::Twig that you have installed doesn't do that (which leads me to believe that you have a bogus version). For more information on the whole must-return-a-true-value thing, see perldoc perlmod.

"One word of warning: if you meet a bunch of Perl programmers on the bus or something, don't look them in the eye. They've been known to try to convert the young into Perl monks." - Frank Willison

[matth]

I have re-installed it and with the make test command I get the following output (shortened version)

bash-2.05$ make test

cp Twig.pm blib/lib/XML/Twig.pm
PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/bin/perl -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib -I/usr/lib/perl
+5/5.6.1/i386-linux -I/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.1 -e 'use Test::Harness qw(&r
+untests $verbose); $verbose=0; runtests @ARGV;' t/*.t
t/is_field..........XML/Twig.pm did not return a true value at t/is_fi
+eld.t line 4.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t/is_field.t line 4.
t/is_field..........dubious
        Test returned status 255 (wstat 65280, 0xff00)
t/test1.............XML/Twig.pm did not return a true value at t/test1
+.t line 11.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t/test1.t line 11.
t/test1.............dubious
        Test returned status 255 (wstat 65280, 0xff00)
t/test2.............XML/Twig.pm did not return a true value at t/test2
+.t line 10.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t/test2.t line 10.
t/test2.............dubious
        Test returned status 255 (wstat 65280, 0xff00)
t/test3.............XML/Twig.pm did not return a true value at t/test3
+.t line 13.

Interesting problem.

[matth]

In follow up to this my previous post:
Read more... (15 kB)

[matth]

Good monks. I have tried again to install it but with the same resulting problem.

drwxr-xr-x    5 redden   redden       4096 Dec  5 20:09 blib
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden      18377 Nov  2 10:36 Changes
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden        938 Nov  1 18:44 check_optional
+_modules
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden      18571 Dec  5 20:09 Makefile
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden        556 Nov  1 18:44 Makefile.PL
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden        495 Nov  1 18:44 MANIFEST
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden       2585 Nov  1 18:44 README
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden       2099 Nov  1 18:44 speedup
drwxr-xr-x    2 redden   redden       4096 Nov 10 17:17 t
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden          0 Dec  5 20:09 Twig.pm
-rw-r--r--    1 redden   redden     284561 Nov 10 17:17 Twig.pm.slow

Can anyone see any problems with this. Why doesn't the Twig.pm file contain anything?

[mirod]

What version is this (try perl -MXML::Twig -l -e'print $XML::TWIG::VERSION')? And how are you installing it? Did you do Perl Makefile.PL? Twig.pm should not be empty, but in any case it is generated from Twig.pm.slow (see Speeding-up OO accessor methods for the reason to this).

[hossman]

The fact that your version of Twig.pm is zero bytes after intallation is definitely suspicious.

I for one would be interested if you posted all of the STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR from your CPAN session. (I'm suspect mirod would be interested too.)

As allways, posting the output of "perl -V" on your system would be useful -- in situations like this where the installation takes divergent paths based on which version of perl you are using, it is ESENTIAL -- in figuring out what is happening.

[matth]

Sorry for the delay in the reply. perl -V gives the first line as :

Summary of my perl5 (revision 5.0 version 6 subversion 1) configuratio
+n:

The first line of the readme for the XML::Twig is:

$Id: README,v 1.8 2002/10/20 23:40:09 mrodrigu Exp $

I'm not really sure how to do the following:

Post all of the STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR from your CPAN session

Sorry.

[matth]

I have now got it working. The problem was due to poor system administration on my part.