The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of Sean Conner, who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Friday, January 14, 2005

I'm ready to run screaming towards the hills

I'm attempting to debug the shopping cart from hell. I finally got rid of the warnings, and the script is generating the following:

Set-Cookie: shopper_id=91548; path=/;
Content-type: text/html

<HTML> …

But Apache still doesnt' like it. I poke around and fine a test.pl script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Hello world\n";

Okay. I can build on this, adding stuff to see what Apache might be complaing about. I run this script from the command line and get “: bad interpreter: No such file or directory”.

Excuse me?

# which perl
/usr/bin/perl
# more test.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Hello world\n";

Huh?

I write my own version of this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Hello world\n";

And it worked.

Me: 0. Desk 2:

Okay, probably some invisible character in test.pl that's giving the perl interpreter fits. Delete #!/usr/bin/perl and retype it.

: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Me: 0. Desk 3:

Much mucking around later (and remember, this is a side trek from what I'm supposed to be doing—debugging some comercial perl script) I find out that not only is test.pl in the Microsoft text format, but that the version of vi (vi!) I'm using is “smart” enough to deal with the Microsoft text format and keep the file in that format!

Me: 0. Desk 4:

XXXX this, I'm going home.

Obligatory Picture

[Self-portrait with a Christmas Tree] Oh Chrismtas Tree! My Christmas Tree! Rise up and hear the bells!

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

Obligatory AI Disclaimer

No AI was used in the making of this site, unless otherwise noted.

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2026 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.