| Subject: | bug in the stop_pulse function |
Greetings,
I got a bug in the stop_pulse function. The bug can be verified by introducing a exception with "die" in the calling code of pulse_start.
This is the error message that I got:
Can't kill a non-numeric process ID at E:/apps/strawberry/perl/site/lib/Term/Pulse.pm line 112, <DATA> line 1.
By not checking if the $pid is defined and valid in stop_pulse function, this generates an error message that hides the real problem in my code.
This is also confirmed by removing invocation of pulse_start. Just loading Term::Pulse with use() will cause this problem.
This issue can be avoided by doing three things in pulse_stop:
1 - Checking if $pid is defined;
2 - Checking if the $pid is valid by trying "kill 0 $pid". With the signal 0, nothing will be done with the process besides checking if it is active.
3 - Traping the kill exception by using eval {}.
It would be also interesting checking if there is an exception stored in $@ and use warn with it before calling kill().
Please let me know if you need more information or some test cases. I could try to provide a test for the distribution to check this expected behavior.
Regards,
Alceu