CGI.pm

Changes for version 3.45

BUG FIXES
- 1. Prevent warnings about "uninitialized values" for REQUEST_URI, HTTP_USER_AGENT and other environment variables. Patches by Callum Gibson, heiko and Mark Stosberg. (RT#24684, RT#29065) 2. Avoid death in some cases when running under Taint mode on Windows. Patch by Peter Hancock (RT#43796) 3. Allow 0 to be used as a default value in popup_menu(). This was broken starting in 3.37. Thanks to Haze, who was the first to report this and supply a patch, and pfschill, who pinpointed when the bug was introduced. A regression test for this was also added. (RT#37908) 4. Allow "+" as a valid character in file names, which fixes temp file creation on OS X Leopard. Thanks to Andy Armstrong, and alech for patches. (RT#30504) 5. Set binmode() on the Netware platform, thanks to Guenter Knauf (RT#27455) 6. Don't allow a CGI::Carp error handler to die recursively. Print a warning and exit instead. Thanks to Marc Chantreux. (RT#45956) 7. The Dump() method now is fixed to escape HTML properly. Thanks to Mark Stosberg (RT#21341) 8. Support for <optgroup> with scrolling_list() now works the same way as it does for popup_menu(). Thanks to Stuart Johnston (RT#30097) 9. CGI::Pretty now works properly when $" is set to ''. Thanks to Jim Keenan (RT#12401)
10. Fix crash when used in combination with PerlEx::DBI. Thanks to Burak Gürsoy (RT#19902)
- DOCUMENTATION
  - 1. Several typos were fixed, Thanks to ambs. (RT#41105) 2. A typo related to the nosticky pragma was fixed, thanks to Britton Kerin. (RT#43220) 3. examples/nph-clock.cgi is now more portable, by calling localtime() rather than `/bin/date`, thanks to Guenter Knauf. (RT#27456). 4. In CGI::Carp, the SEE ALSO section was cleaned up, thanks to Slaven Rezic. (RT#32769) 5. The docs for redirect() were updated to reflect that most headers are ignored during redirection. Thanks to Mark Stosberg (RT#44911)
- INTERNALS
  - 1. New t/unescapeHTML.t test script has been added. It includes a TODO test for a pre-existing bug which could use a patch. Thanks to Pete Gamache and Mark Stosberg (RT#39122) 2. New test scripts have been added for user_agent(), popup_menu() and query_string(), scrolling_list() and Dump() Thanks to Mark Stosberg and Stuart Johnston. (RT#37908, RT#43006, RT#21341, RT#30097) 3. CGI::Carp and CGI::Util have been updated to have non-developer version numbers. Thanks to Slaven Rezic. (RT#48425) 4. CGI::Switch and CGI::Apache now properly set their VERSION in their own name space. Thanks to Alexey Tourbin (RT#11941,RT#11942)
  - Version 3.44 1. Patch from Kurt Jaeger to allow HTTP PUT even if the content length is unknown. 2. Patch from Pavel merdin to fix a problem for one of the FireFox addons. 3. Fixed issue in mod_perl & fastCGI environment of cookies returned from CGI->cookie() leaking from one session to another.
  - Version 3.43 1. Documentation patch from MARKSTOS@cpan.org to replace all occurrences of "new CGI" with CGI->new()" to reflect best perl practices. 2. Patch from Stepan Kasal to fix utf-8 related problems in perl 5.10
  - Version 3.42 1. Added patch from Renee Baecker that makes it possible to subclass CGI::Pretty. 2. Added patch from Nicholas Clark to allow ~ characters in temporary directories. 3. Added patch from Renee Baecker that fixes the inappropriate escaping of fields in multipart headers.
  - Version 3.41 1. Fix url() returning incorrect path when query string contains escaped newline. 2. Added additional windows temporary directories and environment variables, courtesy patch from Renee Baecker 3. Added a handle() method to the lightweight upload filehandles. This method returns a real IO::Handle object. 4. Added patch from Tony Vanlingen to fix deep recursion warnings in CGI::Pretty.
  - Version 3.40 1. Fixed CGI::Fast docs to eliminate references to a "special" version of Perl. 2. Makefile.PL now depends on FCGI so that CGI::Fast installs properly. 3. Fix script_name() call from Stephane Chazelas.
  - Version 3.39 1. Fixed regression in "exists" function when using tied interface to CGI via $q->Vars.
  - Version 3.38 1. Fix annoying warning in http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=34551 2. Added nobr() function http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=35377 3. popup_menu() allows multiple items to be selected by default, satisfying http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=35376 4. Patch from Renee Backer to avoid doubled <http-equiv> headers. 5. Fixed documentation bug that describes what happens when a parameter is empty (e.g. "?test1="). 6. Fixed minor warning described at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=36435 7. Fixed overlap of attribute and parameter space described in http://rt.perl.org/rt3//Ticket/Display.html?id=24294
  - Version 3.37 1. Fix pragmas so that they persist over modperl invocations (e.g. RT 34761) 2. Fixed handling of chunked multipart uploads; thanks to Michael Bernhardt who reported and fixed the problem.
  - Version 3.36 1. Fix CGI::Cookie to support cookies that are separated by "," instead of ";".
  - Version 3.35 1. Resync with bleadperl, primarily fixing a bug in parsing semicolons in uploaded filenames.
  - Version 3.34 1. Handle Unicode %uXXXX escapes properly -- patch from DANKOGAI@cpan.org 2. Fix url() method to not choke on path names that contain regex characters.
  - Version 3.33 1. Remove uninit variable warning when calling url(-relative=>1) 2. Fix uninit variable warnings for two lc calls 3. Fixed failure of tempfile upload due to sprintf() taint failure in perl 5.10
  - Version 3.32 1. Patch from Miguel Santinho to prevent sending premature headers under mod_perl 2.0
  - Version 3.31 1. Patch from Xavier Robin so that CGI::Carp issues a 500 Status code rather than a 200 status code. 2. Patch from Alexander Klink to select correct temporary directory in OSX Leopard so that upload works. 3. Possibly fixed "wrapped pack" error on 5.10 and higher.
  - Version 3.30 1. Patch from Mike Barry to handle POSTDATA in the same way as PUT. 2. Patch from Rafael Garcia-Suarez to correctly reencode unicode values as byte values.
  - Version 3.29 1. The position of file handles is now reset to zero when CGI->new is called. (Mark Stosberg) 2. uploadInfo() now works across multiple object instances. Also, the first tests for uploadInfo() were added as part of the fix. (CPAN bug 11895, with contributions from drfrench and Mark Stosberg).
  - Version 3.28 1. Applied patch from Allen Day that makes Cookie parsing RFC2109 compliant (attribute/values can be separated by commas as well as semicolons). 2. Applied patch from Stephan Struckmann that allows script_name() to be set correctly. 3. Fixed problem with url(-full) in which port number appears twice.
  - Version 3.27 1. Applied patch from Steve Taylor that allows checkbox_groups to be disabled with a new -disabled=> option.
  - Version 3.26 1. Fixed alternate stylesheet behavior so that it is insensitive to order of declarations. 2. Patch from John Binns to allow users to provide a callback to CGI::Carp. 3. Added "~" as an unreserved character in escape(). 4. Patch from Chris Fedde to prevent HTTP_HOST from inhibiting SERVER_PORT in url() generation. 5. Fixed outdated documentation (and behavior) of -language in start_html -script option. 6. Fixed bug in seconds calculation in CGI::Util::expire_calc.
  - Version 3.25 1. Fixed the link to the Netscape frames page. 2. Added ability to specify an alternate stylesheet. 3. Add support for XForms POST submssion both as application/xml or as multipart/related
  - Version 3.24 1. In startform(), if request_uri() returns undef, then falls back to self_url(). This should rarely happen except when run outside of the CGI environment. 2. image button alignment options were mistakenly being capitalized, causing xhtml validation to fail.
  - Version 3.23 1. Typo in upload() persisted, now fixed for real. Thanks to Emanuele Zeppieri for correct patch and regression test.
  - Version 3.22 1. Typo in upload() function broke uploads. Now fixed (CPAN bug 21126).
  - Version 3.21 1. Don't try to read data at all when POST > $POST_MAX. 2. Fixed bug that caused $cgi->param('name',undef,'value') to unset param('name') entirely. 3. Fixed bug in which upload() sometimes returns empty. (CPAN bug #12694). 4. Incorporated patch from BURAK@cpan.org to support HTTPcookies (CPAN bug 21019).
  - Version 3.20 1. Patch from David Wheeler for CGI::Cookie->bake(). Uses mod_perl headers_out->add() rather than headers_out->set(). 2. Fixed problem identified by Andrei Voronkov in which start_form() output was screwed up when initial argument begins with a dash and subsequent arguments do not. 3. Quashed uninitialized variable warnings coming from script_name(), url() and other functions that require access to the PATH_INFO environment variable.
  - Version 3.19 1. Added patch from Stephen Frost that allows one to suppress use of the temp file that is created during uploads. 2. Fixed problem noted by Martin Foster in which regular expression meta-character terms in the path information were not quoted, causing URL parsing to fail on URLs that contained metacharacters (such as +). 3. More fixes to the url() method. 4. Removed "hack to fix broken PATH_INFO in MSII".
  - Version 3.18 1. Doc typo fixes. 2. Patch from Steve Peters to default the document type to match the charset. 3. Fixed param() so that param(-name=>'foo',-values=>[]) sets the parameter to empty list.
  - Version 3.17 Fri Feb 24 14:01:27 EST 2006 1. Added patch from Mike Hanafey which caused 0 arguments to CGI::Cookie->new() to be treated as empty. 2. Patch to CGI::Carp from Peter Whaite to fix the unfixable problem of CGI::Carp not behaving correctly in an eval() context. 3. CGI::Fast->new() calls CGI->_reset_globals to avoid contamination of one session with another's variables. 4. Fixed upload failure on files that contain semicolons in their names.
  - Version 3.16 Wed Feb 8 13:29:11 EST 2006 1. header() -charset option now works even when the MIME type is not "text". 2. Fixed documentation for cookie() function and fastCGI. 3. Upload filehandles now only closed automatically on Windows systems. 4. Apache::Cookie compatibility fix from David Wheeler 5. CGI::Carp->fatalsToBrowser() does not work correctly with mod_perl 2. No workaround is known. 6. Fixed text status code associated with 302 redirects. Should be "Found" but was "Moved". 7. Fixed charset in start_html() and header() to be in synch.
  - Version 3.15 Wed Dec 7 15:13:22 EST 2005 1. Remove extraneous "?" from self_url() when URI contains a ? but no query string.
  - Version 3.14 Tue Dec 6 17:12:03 EST 2005 1. Fixed broken scrolling_list() select attribute.
  - Version 3.13 1. Removed extraneous empty "?" from end of self_url().
  - Version 3.12 1. Fixed virtual_port so that it works properly with https protocol. 2. Fixed documentation for upload_hook(). 3. Added POSTDATA documentation. 4. Made upload_hook() work in function-oriented mode. 5. Fixed POST_MAX behavior so that it doesn't cause client to hang. 6. Disabled automatic tab indexes and added new -tabindex pragma to turn automatic indexes back on. 7. The url() and self_url() methods now work better in the context of Apache mod_rewrite. Be advised that path_info() may give you confusing results when mod_rewrite is active because Apache calculates the path info *after* rewriting. This is mostly worked around in url() and self_url(), but you may notice some anomalies. 8. Removed empty (and non-validating) <div> from code emitted by end_form(). 9. Fixed CGI::Carp to work correctly with Mod_perl 1.29 in an Apache 2 environment. 10. Setting $CGI::TMPDIRECTORY should now be effective.
  - Version 3.11 1. Killed warning in CGI::Cookie about MOD_PERL_API_VERSION 2. Fixed append() so that it works in function mode. 3. Workaround for a bug that appears in Apache2 versions through 2.0.54 in which SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO are incorrect if the additional path_info contains a double slash. This workaround will handle the common case of http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/log.cgi/http://www.some.other.site/args, but will not handle the uncommon case of a ScriptAlias directive that adds additional path information to the end of the translated URI.
  - Version 3.10 1. Added Apache2::RequestIO, which is necessary for mp2 interoperability.
  - Version 3.09 1. Fixed tabindex="0" when using CGI to create forms without a prior start_html 2. Removed warning about non-numeric MOD_PERL_API_VERSION.
  - Version 3.08 1. update support for mod_perl 2.0. versions prior to mod_perl 1.999_22 (2.0.0-RC5) are no longer supported.
  - Version 3.07 1. Fixed typo in mod_perl detection.
  - Version 3.06
    - 1. Fixed bare call to script() in start_html 2. Moved Fh::DESTROY out of autoloaded functions so as to avoid clobbering $@ when CGI functions are executed in an eval{} context. 3. mod_perl 2.0 version detection patch in CGI::Cookie provided by Allen Day. 4. autoEscape() flag is now respected when generating extra attributes. 5. Tests for *tag start/end generation from Shlomi Fish. 6. Support for can() method provided by Ron Savage. 7. Fix for lang='' when outputting XHTML. 8. Added support for chunked transfer encoding, as suggested by Hakan Ardo 9. Fixed clobbering of row and column headers in tableized radio and checkbox groups, as reported by Nicolas Thierry-Mieg.
    - 10. <Label> tags are now associated with form elements, as suggested by accessibility guidelines. 11. The <?xml> directive produced by start_html is now turned off by default and the charset is specified in a <meta> directive. Apparently IE6 (and maybe some versions of Opera) were getting confused by this. 12. Support for tab indexes. 13. Retired the HTML docs. The POD docs are now primary documentation. 14. CGI::Carp now correctly detects and handles Apache::Dispatch. 15. CGI::Util::utf8_chr now correctly sets the UTF8 flag on 5.006 or higher perls (fix courtesy Slaven Rezic).
  - Version 3.05
    - 1. Fixed uninitialized variable warning on start_form() when running from command line. 2. Fixed CGI::_set_attributes so that attributes with a - are handled correctly. 3. Fixed CGI::Carp::die() so as to avoid problems from _longmess() clobbering @_. 4. If HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST is defined (i.e. running under a proxy), the various functions that return HOST will use that instead. 5. Fix for undefined utf8() call in CGI::Util. 6. Changed the call to warningsToBrowser() in CGI::Carp::fatalsToBrowser to call only after HTTP header is sent (thanks to Didier Lebrun for noticing). 7. Patches from Dan Harkless to make CGI.pm validatable against HTML 3.2. 8. Fixed an extraneous "foo=bar" appearing when extra style parameters passed to start_html; 9. Fixed cross-site scripting bug in startform() pointed out by Dan Harkless.
    - 10. Fixed documentation to discuss list context behavior of form-element generators explicitly. 11. Fixed incorrect results from end_form() when called in OO manner. 12. Fixed query string stripping in order to handle URLs containing escaped newlines. 13. During server push, set NPH to 0 rather than 1. This is supposed to fix problems with Apache. 14. Fixed incorrect processing of multipart form fields that contain embedded quotes. There's still the issue of how to handle ones that contain embedded semicolons, but no one has complained (yet). 15. Fixed documentation bug in -style argument to start_html() 16. Added -status argument to redirect().
  - Version 3.04
    - 1. Fixed the problem with mod_perl crashing when "defaults" button pressed.
  - Version 3.03
    - 1. Fix upload hook functionality 2. Workaround for CGI->unescape_html() 3. Bumped version numbers in CGI::Fast and CGI::Util for 5.8.3-tobe
  - Version 3.02
    - 1. Bring in Apache::Response just in case. 2. File upload on EBCDIC systems now works.
  - Version 3.01
    - 1. No fix yet for upload failures when running on EBCDIC server. 2. Fixed uninitialized glob warnings that appeared when file uploading under perl 5.8.2. 3. Added patch from Schlomi Fish to allow debugging of PATH_INFO from command line. 4. Added patch from Steve Hay to correctly unlink tmp files under mod_perl/windows 5. Added upload_hook functionality from Jamie LeTaul 6. Workarounds for mod_perl 2 IO issues. Check that file upload and state saving still working. 7. Added code for underreads. 8. Fixed misleading description of redirect() and relative URLs in the POD docs. 9. Workaround for weird interaction of CGI::Carp with Safe module reported by William McKee.
    - 10. Added patches from Ilmari Karonen to improve behavior of CGI::Carp. 11. Fixed documentation error in -style argument. 12. Added virtual_port() method for finding out what port server is listening on in a virtual-host aware fashion.
  - Version 3.00
    - 1. Patch from Randal Schwartz to fix bug introduced by cross-site scripting vulnerability "fix." 2. Patch from JFreeman to replace UTF-8 escape constant of 0xfe with 0xfc. Hope this is right!
  - Version 2.99
    - 1. Patch from Steve Hay to fix extra Content-type: appearing on browser screen when FatalsToBrowser invoked. 2. Patch from Ewann Corvellec to fix cross-site scripting vulnerability. 3. Fixed tmpdir routine for file uploading to solve problem that occurs under mod_perl when tmpdir is writable at startup time, but not at session time.
  - Version 2.98
    - 1. Fixed crash in Dump() function.
  - Version 2.97
    - 1. Sigh. Uploaded wrong 2.96 to CPAN.
  - Version 2.96
    - 1. More bugfixes to the -style argument.
  - Version 2.95
    - 1. Fixed bugs in start_html(-style=>...) support introduced in 2.94.
  - Version 2.94
    - 1. Removed warning from reset() method. 2. Moved
    - and tags into the :html3 group. Hope this removes undefined CGI::Area errors.
      - Changed CGI::Carp to play with mod_perl2 and to (hopefully) restore
    - reporting of compile-time errors.
      - Fixed potential deadlock between web server and CGI.pm when aborting
    - a read due to POST_MAX (reported by Antti Lankila).
      - Fixed issue with tag-generating function not incorporating content
    - when first variable undef.
      - Fixed cross-site scripting bug reported by obscure.
      - Fixed Dump() function to return correctly formed XHTML - bug
    - reported by Ralph Siemsen.
  - Version 2.93
    - 1. Fixed embarassing bug in mp1 support.
  - Version 2.92
    - 1. Fix to be P3P compliant submitted from MPREWITT. 2. Added CGI->r() API for mod_perl1/mod_perl2. 3. Fixed bug in redirect() that was corrupting cookies. 4. Minor fix to behavior of reset() button to make it consistent with submit() button (first time this has been changed in 9 years). 5. Patch from Dan Kogai to handle UTF-8 correctly in 5.8 and higher. 6. Patch from Steve Hay to make CGI::Carp's error messages appear on MSIE browsers. 7. Added Yair Lenga's patch for non-urlencoded postings. 8. Added Stas Bekman's patches for mod_perl 2 compatibility. 9. Fixed uninitialized escape behavior submitted by William Campbell.
    - 10. Fixed tied behavior so that you can pass arguments to tie() 11. Fixed incorrect generation of URLs when the path_info contains + and other odd characters. 12. Fixed redirect(-cookies=>$cookie) problem. 13. Fixed tag generation bug that affects -javascript passed to start_html().
  - Version 2.91
    - 1. Attribute generation now correctly respects the value of autoEscape(). 2. Fixed endofrm() syntax error introduced by Ben Edgington's patch.
  - Version 2.90
    - 1. Fixed bug in redirect header handling. 2. Added P3P option to header(). 3. Patches from Alexey Mahotkin to make CGI::Carp work correctly with object-oriented exceptions. 4. Removed inaccurate description of how to set multiple cookies from CGI::Cookie pod file. 5. Patch from Kevin Mahony to prevent running out of filehandles when uploading lots of files. 6. Documentation enhancement from Mark Fisher to note that the import_names() method transforms the parameter names into valid Perl names. 7. Patch from Dan Harkless to suppress lang attribute in <html> tag if specified as a null string. 8. Patch from Ben Edgington to fix broken XHTML-transitional 1.0 validation on endform(). 9. Custom html header fix from Steffen Beyer (first letter correctly upcased now)
    - 10. Added a -verbatim option to stylesheet generation from Michael Dickson 11. Faster delete() method from Neelam Gupta 12. Fixed broken Cygwin support. 13. Added empty charset support from Bradley Baetz 14. Patches from Doug Perham and Kevin Mahoney to fix file upload failures when uploaded file is a multiple of 4096.
  - Version 2.89
    - 1. Fixed behavior of ACTION tag when POSTING to a URL that has a query string. 2. Added Patch from Michael Rommel to handle multipart/mixed uploads from Opera
  - Version 2.88
    - 1. Fixed problem with uploads being refused under Perl 5.8 when under Taint mode. 2. Fixed uninitialized variable warnings under Perl 5.8. 3. Fixed CGI::Pretty regression test failures.
  - Version 2.87
    - 1. Security hole patched: when processing multipart/form-data postings, most arguments were being untainted silently. Returned arguments are now tainted correctly. This may cause some scripts to fail that used to work (thanks to Nick Cleaton for pointing this out and persisting until it was fixed). 2. Update for mod_perl 2.0. 3. Pragmas such as -no_xhtml are now respected in mod_perl environment.
  - Version 2.86
    - 1. Fixes for broken CGI::Cookie expiration dates introduced in 2.84.
  - Version 2.85
    - 1. Fix for broken autoEscape function introduced in 2.84.
  - Version 2.84
    - 1. Fix for failed file uploads on Cygwin platforms. 2. HTML escaping code now replaced 0x8b and 0x9b with unicode references < and *#8250;
  - Version 2.83
    - 1. Fixed autoEscape() documentation inconsistencies. 2. Patch from Ville Skyttä to fix a number of XHTML inconsistencies. 3. Added Max-Age to list of CGI::Cookie headers.
  - Version 2.82
    - 1. Patch from Rudolf Troller to add attribute setting and option groups to form fields. 2. Patch from Simon Perreault for silent crashes when using CGI::Carp under mod_perl. 3. Patch from Scott Gifford allows you to set the program name for CGI::Carp.
  - Version 2.81
    - 1. Removed extraneous slash from end of stylesheet tags generated by start_html in non-XHTML mode. 2. Changed behavior of CGI::Carp with respect to eval{} contexts so that output behaves properly in mod_perl environments. 3. Fixed default DTD so that it validates with W3C validator.
  - Version 2.80
    - 1. Fixed broken messages in CGI::Carp. 2. Changed checked="1" to checked="checked" for real XHTML compatibility. 3. Resurrected REQUEST_URI code so that url() works correctly with multiviews.
  - Version 2.79
    - 1. Changes to CGI::Carp to avoid "subroutine redefined" error messages. 2. Default DTD is now XHTML 1.0 Transitional 3. Patches to support all HTML4 tags.
  - Version 2.78
    - 1. Added ability to change encoding in <?xml> assertion. 2. Fixed the old escapeHTML('CGI') ne "CGI" bug 3. In accordance with XHTML requirements, there are no longer any minimized attributes, such as "checked". 4. Patched bug which caused file uploads of exactly 4096 bytes to be truncated to 4094 (thanks to Kevin Mahony) 5. New tests and fixes to CGI::Pretty (thanks to Michael Schwern).
  - Version 2.77
    - 1. No new features, but released in order to fix an apparent CPAN bug.
  - Version 2.76
    - 1. New esc.t regression test for EBCDIC translations courtesy Peter Prymmer. 2. Patches from James Jurach to make compatible with FCGI-ProcManager 3. Additional fields passed to header() (like -Content_disposition) now honor initial capitalization. 4. Patch from Andrew McNaughton to handle utf-8 escapes (%uXXXX codes) in URLs.
  - Version 2.752
    - 1. Syntax error in the autoloaded Fh::new() subroutine. 2. Better error reporting in autoloaded functions.
  - Version 2.751
    - 1. Tiny tweak to filename regular expression function on line 3355.
  - Version 2.75
    - 1. Fixed bug in server push boundary strings (CGI.pm and CGI::Push). 2. Fixed bug that occurs when uploading files with funny characters in the name 3. Fixed non-XHTML-compliant attributes produced by textfield() 4. Added EPOC support, courtesy Olaf Flebbe 5. Fixed minor XHTML bugs. 6. Made escape() and unescape() symmetric with respect to EBCDIC, courtesy Roca, Ignasi <ignasi.roca@fujitsu.siemens.es> 7. Removed uninitialized variable warning from CGI::Cookie, provided by Atipat Rojnuckarin <rojnuca@yahoo.com> 8. Fixed bug in CGI::Pretty that causes it to print partial end tags when the $INDENT global is changed. 9. Single quotes are changed to character entity ' for compatibility with URLs.
  - Version 2.74
    - September 13, 2000 1. Quashed one-character bug that caused CGI.pm to fail on file uploads.
  - Version 2.73
    - September 12, 2000 1. Added -base to the list of arguments accepted by url(). 2. Fixes to XHTML support. 3. POST parameters no longer show up in the Location box.
  - Version 2.72
    - August 19, 2000 1. Fixed the defaults button so that it works again 2. Charset is now correctly saved and restored when saving to files 3. url() now works correctly when given scripts with %20 and other escapes in the additional path info. This undoes a patch introduced in version 2.47 that I no longer understand the rationale for.
  - Version 2.71
    - August 13, 2000 1. Newlines in the value attributes of hidden fields and other form elements are now escaped when using ISO-Latin. 2. Inline script and style sections are now protected as CDATA sections when XHTML mode is on (the default).
  - Version 2.70
    - August 4, 2000 1. Fixed bug in scrolling_list() which omitted a space in front of the "multiple" attribute. 2. Squashed the "useless use of string in void context" message from redirects.
  - Version 2.69
    - 1. startform() now creates default ACTION for POSTs as well as GETs. This may break some browsers, but it no longer violates the HTML spec. 2. CGI.pm now emits XHTML by default. Disable with -no_xhtml. 3. We no longer interpret &#ddd sequences in non-latin character sets.
  - Version 2.68
    - 1. No longer attempts to escape characters when dealing with non ISO-8861 character sets. 2. checkbox() function now defaults to using -value as its label, rather than -name. The current behavior is what has been documented from the beginning. 3. -style accepts array reference to incorporate multiple stylesheets into document.
    - 1. Fixed two bugs that caused the -compile pragma to fail with a syntax error.
  - Version 2.67
    - 1. Added XHTML support (incomplete; tags need to be lowercased). 2. Fixed CGI/Carp when running under mod_perl. Probably broke in other contexts. 3. Fixed problems when passing multiple cookies. 4. Suppress warnings from _tableize() that were appearing when using -w switch with radio_group() and checkbox_group(). 5. Support for the header() -attachment argument, which can give pages a default file name when saving to disk.
  - Version 2.66
    - 1. 2.65 changes in make_attributes() broke HTTP header functions (including redirect), so made it context sensitive.
  - Version 2.65
    - 1. Fixed regression tests to skip tests that require implicit fork on machines without fork(). 2. Changed make_attributes() to automatically escape any HTML reserved characters. 3. Minor documentation fix in javascript example.
  - Version 2.64
    - 1. Changes introduced in 2.63 broke param() when retrieving parameter lists containing only a single argument. This is now fixed. 2. self_url() now defaults to returning parameters delimited with semicolon. Use the pragma -oldstyle_urls to get the old "&" delimiter.
  - Version 2.63
    - 1. Fixed CGI::Push to pull out parameters correctly. 2. Fixed redirect() so that it works with default character set 3. Changed param() so as to returned empty string '' when referring to variables passed in query strings like 'name1=&name2'
  - Version 2.62
    - 1. Fixed broken ReadParse() function, and added regression tests 2. Fixed broken CGI::Pretty, and added regression tests
  - Version 2.61
    - 1. Moved more functions from CGI.pm proper into CGI/Util.pm. CGI/Cookie should now be standalone. 2. Disabled per-user temporary directories, which were causing grief.
  - Version 2.60
    - 1. Fixed junk appearing in autogenerated HTML functions when using object-oriented mode.
  - Version 2.59
    - 1. autoescape functionality breaks too much existing code, removed it. 2. use escapeHTML() manually
  - Version 2.58
    - This is the release version of 2.57.
  - Version 2.57
    - 1. Added -debug pragma and turned off auto reading of STDIN. 2. Default DTD updated to HTML 4.01 transitional. 3. Added charset() method and the -charset argument to header(). 4. Fixed behavior of escapeHTML() to respect charset() and to escape nasty Windows characters (thanks to Tom Christiansen). 5. Handle REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING correctly. 6. Removed use_named_parameters() because of dependency problems and general lameness. 7. Fixed problems with bad HREF links generated by url(-relative=>1) when the url is like /people/. 8. Silenced a warning on upload (patch provided by Jonas Liljegren) 9. Fixed race condition in CGI::Carp when errors occur during parsing (patch provided by Maurice Aubrey).
    - 10. Fixed failure of url(-path_info=>1) when path contains % signs. 11. Fixed warning from CGI::Cookie when receiving foreign cookies that don't use name=value format. 12. Fixed incompatibilities with file uploading on VMS systems.
  - Version 2.56
    - 1. Fixed bugs in file upload introduced in version 2.55 2. Fixed long-standing bug that prevented two files with identical names from being uploaded.
  - Version 2.55
    - 1. Fixed cookie regression test so as not to produce an error. 2. Fixed path_info() and self_url() to work correctly together when path_info() modified. 3. Removed manify warnings from CGI::{Switch,Apache}.
  - Version 2.54
    - 1. This will be the last release of the monolithic CGI.pm module. Later versions will be modularized and optimized. 2. DOMAIN tag no longer added to cookies by default. This will break some versions of Internet Explorer, but will avoid breaking networks which use host tables without fully qualified domain names. For compatibility, please always add the -domain tag when creating cookies. 3. Fixed escape() method so that +'s are treated correctly. 4. Updated CGI::Pretty module.
  - Version 2.53
    - 1. Forgot to upgrade regression tests before releasing 2.52. NOTHING ELSE HAS CHANGED IN LIBRARY
  - Version 2.52
    - 1. Spurious newline in checkbox() routine removed. (courtesy John Essen) 2. TEXTAREA linebreaks now respected in dump() routine. (courtesy John Essen) 3. Patches for DOS ports (courtesy Robert Davies) 4. Patches for VMS 5. More fixes for cookie problems 6. Fix CGI::Carp so that it doesn't affect eval{} blocks (courtesy Byron Brummer)
  - Version 2.51
    - 1. Fixed problems with cookies not being remembered when sent to IE 5.0 (and Netscape 5.0 too?) 2. Numerous HTML compliance problems in cgi_docs.html; fixed thanks to Michael Leahy
  - Version 2.50
    - 1. Added a new Vars() method to retrieve all parameters as a tied hash. 2. Untainted tainted tempfile name so that script doesn't fail on terminal unlink. 3. Made picking of upload tempfile name more intelligent so that doesn't fail in case of name collision. 4. Fixed handling of expire times when passed an absolute timestamp. 5. Changed dump() to Dump() to avoid name clashes.
  - Version 2.49
    - 1. Fixes for FastCGI (globals not getting reset) 2. Fixed url() to correctly handle query string and path under MOD_PERL
  - Version 2.48
    - 1. Reverted detection of MOD_PERL to avoid breaking PerlEX.
  - Version 2.47
    - 1. Patch to fix file upload bug appearing in IE 3.01 for Macintosh/PowerPC. 2. Replaced use of $ENV{SCRIPT_NAME} with $ENV{REQUEST_URI} when running under Apache, to fix self-referencing URIs. 3. Fixed bug in escapeHTML() which caused certain constructs, such as CGI->image_button(), to fail. 4. Fixed bug which caused strong('CGI') to fail. Be careful to use CGI::strong('CGI') and not CGI->strong('CGI'). The latter will produce confusing results. 5. Added upload() function, as a preferred replacement for the "filehandle as string" feature. 6. Added cgi_error() function. 7. Rewrote file upload handling to return undef rather than dieing when an error is encountered. Be sure to call cgi_error() to find out what went wrong.
  - Version 2.46
    - 1. Fix for failure of the "include" tests under mod_perl 2. Added end_multipart_form to prevent failures during qw(-compile :all)
  - Version 2.45
    - 1. Multiple small documentation fixes 2. CGI::Pretty didn't get into 2.44. Fixed now.
  - Version 2.44
    - 1. Fixed file descriptor leak in upload function. 2. Fixed bug in header() that prevented fields from containing double quotes. 3. Added Brian Paulsen's CGI::Pretty package for pretty-printing output HTML. 4. Removed CGI::Apache and CGI::Switch from the distribution. 5. Generated start_* shortcuts so that start_table(), end_table(), start_ol(), end_ol(), and so forth now work (see the docs on how to enable this feature). 6. Changed accept() to Accept(), sub() to Sub(). There's still a conflict with reset(), but this will break too many existing scripts!
  - Version 2.43
    - 1. Fixed problem with "use strict" and file uploads (thanks to Peter Haworth) 2. Fixed problem with not MSIE 3.01 for the power_mac not doing file uploads right. 3. Fixed problem with file upload on IIS 4.0 when authorization in use. 4. -content_type and '-content-type' can now be provided to header() as synonyms for -type. 5. CGI::Carp now escapes the ampersand BEFORE escaping the > and < signs. 6. Fixed "not an array reference" error when passing a hash reference to radio_group(). 7. Fixed non-removal of uploaded TMP files on NT platforms which occurs when server runs on non-C drive (thanks to Steve Kilbane for finding this one).
  - Version 2.42
    - 1. Too many screams of anguish at changed behavior of url(). Is now back to its old behavior by default, with options to generate all the variants. 2. Added regression tests. "make test" now works. 3. Documentation fixes. 4. Fixes for Macintosh uploads, but uploads STILL do not work pending changes to MacPerl.
  - Version 2.41
    - 1. url() method now includes the path info. Use script_name() to get it without path info(). 2. Changed handling of empty attributes in HTML tag generation. Be warned! Use table({-border=>undef}) rather than table({-border=>''}). 3. Changes to allow uploaded filenames to be compared to other strings with "eq", "cmp" and "ne". 4. Changes to allow CGI.pm to coexist more peacefully with ActiveState PerlEX. 5. Changes to prevent exported variables from clashing when importing ":all" set in combination with cookies.
  - Version 2.40
    - 1. CGI::Carp patched to work better with mod_perl (thanks to Chris Dean). 2. Uploads of files whose names begin with numbers or the Windows \\UNC\shared\file nomenclature should no longer fail. 3. The <STYLE> tag (for cascading style sheets) now generates the required TYPE attribute. 4. Server push primitives added, thanks to Ed Jordan. 5. Table and other HTML3 functions are now part of the :standard set. 6. Small documentation fixes.
    - TO DO: 1. Do something about the DTD mess. The module should generate correct DTDs, or at least offer the programmer a way to specify the correct one. 2. Split CGI.pm into CGI processing and HTML-generating modules. 3. More robust file upload (?still not working on the Macintosh?). 4. Bring in all the HTML4 functionality, particular the accessibility features.
  - Version 2.39
    - 1. file uploads failing because of VMS patch; fixed. 2. -dtd parameter was not being properly processed.
  - Version 2.38
    - I finally got tired of all the 2.37 betas and released 2.38. The main difference between this version and the last 2.37 beta (2.37b30) are some fixes for VMS. This should allow file upload to work properly on all VMS Web servers.
  - Version 2.37, various beta versions
    - 1. Added a CGI::Cookie::parse() method for lucky mod_perl users. 2. No longer need separate -values and -labels arguments for multi-valued form elements. 3. Added better interface to raw cookies (fix courtesy Ken Fox, kfox@ford.com) 4. Added param_fetch() function for direct access to parameter list. 5. Fix to checkbox() to allow for multi-valued single checkboxes (weird problem). 6. Added a compile() method for those who want to compile without importing. 7. Documented the import pragmas a little better. 8. Added a -compile switch to the use clause for the long-suffering mod_perl and Perl compiler users. 9. Fixed initialization routines so that FileHandle and type globs work correctly (and hash initialization doesn't fail!).
    - 10. Better deletion of temporary files on NT systems. 11. Added documentation on escape(), unescape(), unescapeHTML() and unescapeHTML() subroutines. 12. Added documentation on creating subclasses. 13. Fixed problem when calling $self->SUPER::foo() from inheriting subclasses. 14. Fixed problem using filehandles from within subroutines. 15. Fixed inability to use the string "CGI" as a parameter. 16. Fixed exponentially growing $FILLUNIT bug 17. Check for undef filehandle in read_from_client() 18. Now requires the UNIVERSAL.pm module, present in Perl 5.003_7 or higher. 19. Fixed problem with uppercase-only parameters being ignored. 20. Fixed vanishing cookie problem. 21. Fixed warning in initialize_globals() under mod_perl. 22. File uploads from Macintosh versions of MSIE should now work. 23. Pragmas now preceded by dashes (-nph) rather than colons (:nph). Old style is supported for backward compatability. 24. Can now pass arguments to all functions using {} brackets, resolving historical inconsistencies. 25. Removed autoloader warnings about absent MultipartBuffer::DESTROY. 26. Fixed non-sticky checkbox() when -name used without -value. 27. Hack to fix path_info() in IIS 2.0. Doesn't help with IIS 3.0. 28. Parameter syntax for debugging from command line now more straightforward. 29. Added $DISABLE_UPLOAD to disable file uploads. 30. Added $POST_MAX to error out if POSTings exceed some ceiling. 31. Fixed url_param(), which wasn't working at all. 32. Fixed variable suicide problem in s///e expressions, where the autoloader was needed during evaluation. 33. Removed excess spaces between elements of checkbox and radio groups 34. Can now create "valueless" submit buttons 35. Can now set path_info as well as read it. 36. ReadParse() now returns a useful function result. 37. import_names() now allows you to optionally clear out the namespace before importing (for mod_perl users) 38. Made it possible to have a popup menu or radio button with a value of "0". 39. link() changed to Link() to avoid overriding native link function. 40. Takes advantage of mod_perl's register_cleanup() function to clear globals. 41. <LAYER> and <ILAYER> added to :html3 functions. 42. Fixed problems with private tempfiles and NT/IIS systems. 43. No longer prints the DTD by default (I bet no one will complain). 44. Allow underscores to replace internal hyphens in parameter names. 45. CGI::Push supports heterogeneous MIME types and adjustable delays between pages. 46. url_param() method added for retrieving URL parameters even when a fill-out form is POSTed. 47. Got rid of warnings when radio_group() is called. 48. Cookies now moved to their very own module. 49. Fixed documentation bug in CGI::Fast. 50. Added a :no_debug pragma to the import list.
  - Version 2.36
    - 1. Expanded JavaScript functionality 2. Preliminary support for cascading stylesheets 3. Security fixes for file uploads:
      - Module will bail out if its temporary file already exists
      - Temporary files can now be made completely private to avoid peeking by other users or CGI scripts.
    - 4. use CGI qw/:nph/ wasn't working correctly. Now it is. 5. Cookie and HTTP date formats didn't meet spec. Thanks to Mark Fisher (fisherm@indy.tce.com) for catching and fixing this.
    - p
  - Version 2.35
    - 1. Robustified multipart file upload against incorrect syntax in POST. 2. Fixed more problems with mod_perl. 3. Added -noScript parameter to start_html(). 4. Documentation fixes.
  - Version 2.34
    - 1. Stupid typo fix
  - Version 2.33
    - 1. Fixed a warning about an undefined environment variable. 2. Doug's patch for redirect() under mod_perl 3. Partial fix for busted inheritence from CGI::Apache 4. Documentation fixes.
  - Version 2.32
    - 1. Improved support for Apache's mod_perl. 2. Changes to better support inheritance. 3. Support for OS/2.
  - Version 2.31
    - 1. New uploadInfo() method to obtain header information from uploaded files. 2. cookie() without any arguments returns all the cookies passed to a script. 3. Removed annoying warnings about $ENV{NPH} when running with the -w switch. 4. Removed operator overloading throughout to make compatible with new versions of perl. 5. -expires now implies the -date header, to avoid clock skew. 6. WebSite passes cookies in $ENV{COOKIE} rather than $ENV{HTTP_COOKIE}. We now handle this, even though it's O'Reilly's fault. 7. Tested successfully against new sfio I/O layer. 8. Documentation fixes.
  - Version 2.30
    - 1. Automatic detection of operating system at load time. 2. Changed select() function to Select() in order to avoid conflict with Perl built-in. 3. Added Tr() as an alternative to TR(); some people think it looks better that way. 4. Fixed problem with autoloading of MultipartBuffer::DESTROY code. 5. Added the following methods:
      - virtual_host()
      - server_software()
    - 6. Automatic NPH mode when running under Microsoft IIS server.
  - Version 2.29
    - 1. Fixed cookie bugs 2. Fixed problems that cropped up when useNamedParameters was set to 1. 3. Prevent CGI::Carp::fatalsToBrowser() from crapping out when encountering a die() within an eval(). 4. Fixed problems with filehandle initializers.
  - Version 2.28
    - 1. Added support for NPH scripts; also fixes problems with Microsoft IIS. 2. Fixed a problem with checkbox() values not being correctly saved and restored. 3. Fixed a bug in which CGI objects created with empty string initializers took on default values from earlier CGI objects. 4. Documentation fixes.
  - Version 2.27
    - 1. Small but important bug fix: the automatic capitalization of tag attributes was accidentally capitalizing the VALUES as well as the ATTRIBUTE names (oops).
  - Version 2.26
    - 1. Changed behavior of scrolling_list(), checkbox() and checkbox_group() methods so that defaults are honored correctly. The "fix" causes endform() to generate additional <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN"> tags -- don't be surpised. 2. Fixed bug involving the detection of the SSL protocol. 3. Fixed documentation error in position of the -meta argument in start_html(). 4. HTML shortcuts now generate tags in ALL UPPERCASE. 5. start_html() now generates correct SGML header: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
    - 6. CGI::Carp no longer fails "use strict refs" pragma.
  - Version 2.25
    - 1. Fixed bug that caused bad redirection on destination URLs with arguments. 2. Fixed bug involving use_named_parameters() followed by start_multipart_form() 3. Fixed bug that caused incorrect determination of binmode for Macintosh. 4. Spelling fixes on documentation.
  - Version 2.24
    - 1. Fixed bug that caused generation of lousy HTML for some form elements 2. Fixed uploading bug in Windows NT 3. Some code cleanup (not enough)
  - Version 2.23
    - 1. Fixed an obscure bug that caused scripts to fail mysteriously. 2. Fixed auto-caching bug. 3. Fixed bug that prevented HTML shortcuts from passing taint checks. 4. Fixed some -w warning problems.
  - Version 2.22
    - 1. New CGI::Fast module for use with FastCGI protocol. See pod documentation for details. 2. Fixed problems with inheritance and autoloading. 3. Added TR() (<tr>) and PARAM() (<param>) methods to list of exported HTML tag-generating functions. 4. Moved all CGI-related I/O to a bottleneck method so that this can be overridden more easily in mod_perl (thanks to Doug MacEachern). 5. put() method as substitute for print() for use in mod_perl. 6. Fixed crash in tmpFileName() method. 7. Added tmpFileName(), startform() and endform() to export list. 8. Fixed problems with attributes in HTML shortcuts. 9. Functions that don't actually need access to the CGI object now no longer generate a default one. May speed things up slightly.
    - 10. Aesthetic improvements in generated HTML. 11. New examples.
  - Version 2.21
    - 1. Added the -meta argument to start_html(). 2. Fixed hidden fields (again). 3. Radio_group() and checkbox_group() now return an appropriate scalar value when called in a scalar context, rather than returning a numeric value! 4. Cleaned up the formatting of form elements to avoid unesthetic extra spaces within the attributes. 5. HTML elements now correctly include the closing tag when parameters are present but null: em('') 6. Added password_field() to the export list.
  - Version 2.20
    - 1. Dumped the SelfLoader because of problems with running with taint checks and rolled my own. Performance is now significantly improved. 2. Added HTML shortcuts. 3. import() now adheres to the Perl module conventions, allowing CGI.pm to import any or all method names into the user's name space. 4. Added the ability to initialize CGI objects from strings and associative arrays. 5. Made it possible to initialize CGI objects with filehandle references rather than filehandle strings. 6. Added the delete_all() and append() methods. 7. CGI objects correctly initialize from filehandles on NT/95 systems now. 8. Fixed the problem with binary file uploads on NT/95 systems. 9. Fixed bug in redirect().
    - 10. Added '-Window-target' parameter to redirect(). 11. Fixed import_names() so that parameter names containing funny characters work. 12. Broke the unfortunate connection between cookie and CGI parameter name space. 13. Fixed problems with hidden fields whose values are 0. 14. Cleaned up the documentation somewhat.
  - Version 2.19
    - 1. Added cookie() support routines. 2. Added -expires parameter to header(). 3. Added cgi-lib.pl compatability mode. 4. Made the module more configurable for different operating systems. 5. Fixed a dumb bug in JavaScript button() method.
  - Version 2.18
    - 1. Fixed a bug that corrects a hang that occurs on some platforms when processing file uploads. Unfortunately this disables the check for bad Netscape uploads. 2. Fixed bizarre problem involving the inability to process uploaded files that begin with a non alphabetic character in the file name. 3. Fixed a bug in the hidden fields involving the -override directive being ignored when scalar defaults were passed. 4. Added documentation on how to disable the SelfLoader features.
  - Version 2.17
    - 1. Added support for the SelfLoader module. 2. Added oodles of JavaScript support routines. 3. Fixed bad bug in query_string() method that caused some parameters to be silently dropped. 4. Robustified file upload code to handle premature termination by the client. 5. Exported temporary file names on file upload. 6. Removed spurious "uninitialized variable" warnings that appeared when running under 5.002. 7. Added the Carp.pm library to the standard distribution. 8. Fixed a number of errors in this documentation, and probably added a few more. 9. Checkbox_group() and radio_group() now return the buttons as arrays, so that you can incorporate the individual buttons into specialized tables.
    - 10. Added the '-nolabels' option to checkbox_group() and radio_group(). Probably should be added to all the other HTML-generating routines. 11. Added the url() method to recover the URL without the entire query string appended. 12. Added request_method() to list of environment variables available. 13. Would you believe it? Fixed hidden fields again!
  - Version 2.16
    - 1. Fixed hidden fields yet again. 2. Fixed subtle problems in the file upload method that caused intermittent failures (thanks to Keven Hendrick for this one). 3. Made file upload more robust in the face of bizarre behavior by the Macintosh and Windows Netscape clients. 4. Moved the POD documentation to the bottom of the module at the request of Stephen Dahmen. 5. Added the -xbase parameter to the start_html() method, also at the request of Stephen Dahmen. 6. Added JavaScript form buttons at Stephen's request. I'm not sure how to use this Netscape extension correctly, however, so for now the form() method is in the module as an undocumented feature. Use at your own risk!
  - Version 2.15
    - 1. Added the -override parameter to all field-generating methods. 2. Documented the user_name() and remote_user() methods. 3. Fixed bugs that prevented empty strings from being recognized as valid textfield contents. 4. Documented the use of framesets and added a frameset example.
  - Version 2.14
    - This was an internal experimental version that was never released.
  - Version 2.13
    - 1. Fixed a bug that interfered with the value "0" being entered into text fields.
  - Version 2.01
    - 1. Added -rows and -columns to the radio and checkbox groups. No doubt this will cause much grief because it seems to promise a level of meta-organization that it doesn't actually provide. 2. Fixed a bug in the redirect() method -- it was not truly HTTP/1.0 compliant.
  - Version 2.0
    - The changes seemed to touch every line of code, so I decided to bump up the major version number. 1. Support for named parameter style method calls. This turns out to be a big win for extending CGI.pm when Netscape adds new HTML "features". 2. Changed behavior of hidden fields back to the correct "sticky" behavior. This is going to break some programs, but it is for the best in the long run. 3. Netscape 2.0b2 broke the file upload feature. CGI.pm now handles both 2.0b1 and 2.0b2-style uploading. It will probably break again in 2.0b3. 4. There were still problems with library being unable to distinguish between a form being loaded for the first time, and a subsequent loading with all fields blank. We now forcibly create a default name for the Submit button (if not provided) so that there's always at least one parameter. 5. More workarounds to prevent annoying spurious warning messages when run under the -w switch. -w is seriously broken in perl 5.001!
  - Version 1.57
    - 1. Support for the Netscape 2.0 "File upload" field. 2. The handling of defaults for selected items in scrolling lists and multiple checkboxes is now consistent.
  - Version 1.56
    - 1. Created true "pod" documentation for the module. 2. Cleaned up the code to avoid many of the spurious "use of uninitialized variable" warnings when running with the -w switch. 3. Added the autoEscape() method. v 4. Added string interpolation of the CGI object. 5. Added the ability to pass additional parameters to the <BODY> tag. 6. Added the ability to specify the status code in the HTTP header.
  - Bug fixes in version 1.55
    - 1. Every time self_url() was called, the parameter list would grow. This was a bad "feature". 2. Documented the fact that you can pass "-" to radio_group() in order to prevent any button from being highlighted by default.
  - Bug fixes in version 1.54
    - 1. The user_agent() method is now documented; 2. A potential security hole in import() is now plugged. 3. Changed name of import() to import_names() for compatability with CGI:: modules.
  - Bug fixes in version 1.53
    - 1. Fixed several typos in the code that were causing the following subroutines to fail in some circumstances 1. checkbox() 2. hidden() 2. No features added
  - New features added in version 1.52
    - 1. Added backslashing, quotation marks, and other shell-style escape sequences to the parameters passed in during debugging off-line. 2. Changed the way that the hidden() method works so that the default value always overrides the current one. 3. Improved the handling of sticky values in forms. It's now less likely that sticky values will get stuck. 4. If you call server_name(), script_name() and several other methods when running offline, the methods now create "dummy" values to work with.
  - Bugs fixed in version 1.51
    - 1. param() when called without arguments was returning an array of length 1 even when there were no parameters to be had. Bad bug! Bad! 2. The HTML code generated would break if input fields contained the forbidden characters ">< or &. You can now use these characters freely.
  - New features added in version 1.50
    - 1. import() method allows all the parameters to be imported into a namespace in one fell swoop. 2. Parameters are now returned in the same order in which they were defined.
  - Bugs fixed in version 1.45
    - 1. delete() method didn't work correctly. This is now fixed. 2. reset() method didn't allow you to set the name of the button. Fixed.
  - Bugs fixed in version 1.44
    - 1. self_url() didn't include the path information. This is now fixed.
  - New features added in version 1.43
    - 1. Added the delete() method.
  - New features added in version 1.42
    - 1. The image_button() method to create clickable images. 2. A few bug fixes involving forms embedded in <PRE> blocks.
  - New features added in version 1.4
    - 1. New header shortcut methods
      - redirect() to create HTTP redirection messages.
      - start_html() to create the HTML title, complete with the recommended <LINK> tag that no one ever remembers to include.
      - end_html() for completeness' sake.
    - 2. A new save() method that allows you to write out the state of an script to a file or pipe. 3. An improved version of the new() method that allows you to restore the state of a script from a file or pipe. With (2) this gives you dump and restore capabilities! (Wow, you can put a "121,931 customers served" banner at the bottom of your pages!) 4. A self_url() method that allows you to create state-maintaining hypertext links. In addition to allowing you to maintain the state of your scripts between invocations, this lets you work around a problem that some browsers have when jumping to internal links in a document that contains a form -- the form information gets lost. 5. The user-visible labels in checkboxes, radio buttons, popup menus and scrolling lists have now been decoupled from the values sent to your CGI script. Your script can know a checkbox by the name of "cb1" while the user knows it by a more descriptive name. I've also added some parameters that were missing from the text fields, such as MAXLENGTH. 6. A whole bunch of methods have been added to get at environment variables involved in user verification and other obscure features.
  - Bug fixes
    - 1. The problems with the hidden fields have (I hope at last) been fixed. 2. You can create multiple query objects and they will all be initialized correctly. This simplifies the creation of multiple forms on one page. 3. The URL unescaping code works correctly now.