{"id":2283,"date":"2024-04-09T10:56:20","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T14:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/csimmons.dev\/blog\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2025-08-07T13:57:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T17:57:01","slug":"coldfusion-unscoped-variables-and-how-to-find-them-using-the-new-patch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csimmons.dev\/blog\/2024\/04\/coldfusion-unscoped-variables-and-how-to-find-them-using-the-new-patch\/","title":{"rendered":"ColdFusion unscoped variables and how to find them (using the new patch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated 08.07.2025 at the recommendation of a comment from Charlie Arehart<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

On March 12, 2024 ColdFusion (2021 release) Update 13 introduced a change with significant implications for developers, particularly for developers managing older code that could be “leveraging” a “feature” of ColdFusion whereby ColdFusion would forgivingly “search” through scopes in a specific order if a variable name is not prefixed with a scope identifier.<\/p>\n

Rather than re-explain all the details here, Pete Freitag has a great write-up of the unscoped variable issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The release notes for the update<\/a> also contain a section titled Significant changes in the release<\/strong> which details the issue and provides 2 options for “fixing” the issue.<\/p>\n

Option 1:<\/strong> Correct application code to fetch values from the correct scope.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This option is obviously the ideal one, but how do you locate the offending code? If you are fortunate enough to use Fixinator<\/a> there is an option to scan for the issue. See this post<\/a> for how to use Fixinator.<\/p>\n

If you don’t have Fixinator you can implement Option 2 and then use the new patch provided by Adobe to help find issues.<\/p>\n

Option 2:<\/strong> Set searchimplicitscopes value back to TRUE.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This can be accomplished by doing the following (Only one of these needs to be performed)<\/em>:<\/p>\n