Bug #27567 for HTML-Parser: suppress a warning when encode

Wed Jun 13 15:04:03 2007 msouth [...] gmail.com - Ticket created

Subject:

suppress a warning when encode_entities is called with undef

HTML-Parser-3.56 using perl v5.8.6 OS X administrators-computer-4:~/Desktop/web download msouth$ perl -MHTML::Entities -w -e 'print HTML::Entities::encode_entities(undef)'; Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/HTML/Entities.pm

Subject:

patch

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Mon Nov 17 06:00:11 2008 GAAS [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

I don't get why you want to suppress the warning when you are passing input that's not conforming to the specified interface. Is there a good reason for encoding undef as undef?

Mon Nov 17 06:00:33 2008 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Mon Nov 17 06:00:33 2008 GAAS [...] cpan.org - Status changed from 'open' to 'rejected'

Mon Nov 17 08:46:27 2008 "Mike South" - Correspondence added

Subject:	Re: [rt.cpan.org #27567] suppress a warning when encode_entities is called with undef
Date:	Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:45:51 -0500
To:	bug-HTML-Parser@rt.cpan.org
From:	"Mike South" <msouth@gmail.com>

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 6:00 AM, Gisle_Aas via RT <bug-HTML-Parser@rt.cpan.org> wrote:

Show quoted text

<URL: http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=27567 >

I don't get why you want to suppress the warning when you are passing input that's not
conforming to the specified interface. Is there a good reason for encoding undef as undef?

You are already doing it. That is, you already return undef if undef is passed in:

msmbp:~ msouth$ perl -MHTML::Entities -MData::Dumper -e 'print +Dumper( encode_entities(undef) )';

$VAR1 = undef;

This way you do it more quietly. The alternative is for the the caller to have to either wrap their call in a no warnings pragma or call like "encode_entities( $foo || '' )" to suppress the warning.

It is a very common case to have something that might be undefined, but if it is defined I want the entities in it encoded.

The nice thing about this patch is that it doesn't affect old code (except to suppress a warning). The documentation does not define what happens if you pass in undef, so I don't think we would be hurting anyone. Maybe if someone had warnings fatal and wanted that warning when an undef went in, but that seems like a pretty farfetched and much less common use case than the one where you have stuff coming in that might not be defined.

mike

Mon Nov 17 08:46:30 2008 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'rejected' to 'open'

Fri Jan 23 08:11:04 2009 STOCKS [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

I must say that I agree with Mike here. It seems like a much more common case that we don't want to see the warnings when an undef value is passed in. Any estimate as to when this patch might make it into a release?

Mon Feb 09 06:34:13 2009 GAAS [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

Your patch has been applied in 3.60. Thanks.

Mon Feb 09 06:34:14 2009 GAAS [...] cpan.org - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'

Bug #27567 for HTML-Parser: suppress a warning when encode_entities is called with undef