Item1591: "LINKTOOLTIPINFO = on" causes apache error message about uninitialized value in Render.pm

Description

Setting Set LINKTOOLTIPINFO = on will generate lots of error messages in apache2's error.log like this:

[Fri May 08 13:23:19 2009] [error] [client XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] [Fri May  8 13:23:19 2009] view: ...
Use of uninitialized value in substitution iterator at /var/lib/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Render.pm line 563., ...
referer: http://[censored].fzk.de/

I had the setting enabled. For my user account, every topic rendering resulted in this error message. All other users generated the message only, if they had a look to my topic. This absolutely makes sense, but I just wanted to note this...

Installed plugins don't play any role here, as I tracked down.

System Info

Debian stable (Lenny):

-- PhilippLeufke - 24 May 2009

does the functionality otherwise work? if so, please try this patch:

-    $text =~ s/\$username/$users->getLoginName($user)/ge;    # 'jsmith'
+    $text =~ s/\$username/$users->getLoginName($user)/ge if $users->getLoginName($user);    # 'jsmith'

this would mean that getLoginName() is returning undef (line 564 calls $users->getWikiName($user), which i assume you're not getting an error on as well)

getLoginName() documentation says

Get the login name of a user. Returns undef if the user is not known.=

how can this information not be known? when the user isn't logged in, i imagine. any other way?

-- WillNorris - 02 Jun 2009

Removed Sven from waiting for. When a bug is waiting for - developers tend to ignore it until the reporter has provided more info.

PhilippLeufke any chance you can provide some feedback?

-- KennethLavrsen - 16 Jun 2009

---

Will's patch from above seems to be working. The error messages are gone now. But I also don't get how this can happen, since it didn't make any difference whether the user for whom this setting was set (me) was logged in or not (see above...).

-- PhilippLeufke - 17 Jun 2009

It's nothing to do with the logged-in user. The LINKTOOLTIPINFO expands the author of the topic, and if that author is not found in the user DB, the error will result. I added a catch-all.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 10 Aug 2009