use Perl

  $r->custom_response(SERVER_ERROR => 'yikes');

the (difficult to spot) problem is that => makes the SERVER_ERROR constant (500) into the string "SERVER_ERROR". so, you needed to use a comma instead, making the code look like this:

$r->custom_response(SERVER_ERROR, 'yikes');

well, with mod_perl 2.0 and perl-5.8.0 and later, you can use the => operator and still get your constant, so

$r->custom_response(Apache::SERVER_ERROR => 'yikes');

will now work in mod_perl 2.0-land. well, most of the time...

as it turns out, there is a caveat: the constant needs to be defined at least one level deep, meaning that if you imported the constants into your own namespace instead of the Apache:: namespace (as mod_perl 2.0 will let you) this

$r->custom_response(SERVER_ERROR => 'yikes');

still doesn't work. oh, well.

for those that don't give a hoot about mod_perl, (or are otherwise thus far confused), give this script a whirl with a few different perl versions:

package My;

use constant FOO => 0;  # My::FOO

package main;

use constant FOO => 1; # main::FOO

args(FOO => 'arrow');
args(FOO, 'comma');

args(main::FOO => 'arrow');
args(main::FOO, 'comma');

args(My::FOO => 'arrow');
args(My::FOO, 'comma');

sub args {
  print join ':', @_, "\n";
}