Re: What happens when I try to delete a non-existant attribute??

[Chris R. <chr...@me...>]

Tom Jordan <tj...@do...> wrote:
> 
> Hey folks,
> 
> I'd like to delete some attributes by feeding ldap->modify an arrayref,
> but due to my situation I've no guarantee that all of the attributes
> listed in arrayref will exist on the target object.
> 
> Does anyone know what the following code will return into $result if one
> or more of the attributes in $arrayref do not exist on the target object?
> 
> my $mesg = $ldap->modify($dn, delete => $arrayref);
> my $result = $mesg->code;
> 
> Alternately, can anyone think of a better way to go about this (or check
> first to see if the attributes exist?
> 
> Thanks much,
> 
> Tom Jordan
> University of Wisconsin Madison
> 

If you are connecting to your server using LDAPv3 (*not* LDAPv2) then you
could try using 'replace' instead of 'delete'.

The semantics of 'replace' changed rather dramatically between LDAPv2 and
LDAPv3, and in v3 (see RFC 2251 section 4.6) a replace with no values will
delete the entire attribute if it exists, and will be ignored if the
attribute does not exist.

Cheers,

Chris