Fatal(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Fatal(3p)
Fatal - replace functions with equivalents which succeed or
die
use Fatal qw(open close);
sub juggle { . . . }
import Fatal 'juggle';
"Fatal" provides a way to conveniently replace functions
which normally return a false value when they fail with
equivalents which raise exceptions if they are not success-
ful. This lets you use these functions without having to
test their return values explicitly on each call. Excep-
tions can be caught using "eval{}". See perlfunc and perl-
var for details.
The do-or-die equivalents are set up simply by calling
Fatal's "import" routine, passing it the names of the func-
tions to be replaced. You may wrap both user-defined func-
tions and overridable CORE operators (except "exec", "sys-
tem" which cannot be expressed via prototypes) in this way.
If the symbol ":void" appears in the import list, then func-
tions named later in that import list raise an exception
only when these are called in void context--that is, when
their return values are ignored. For example
use Fatal qw/:void open close/;
# properly checked, so no exception raised on error
if(open(FH, "< /bogotic") {
warn "bogo file, dude: $!";
}
# not checked, so error raises an exception
close FH;
Lionel.Cons@cern.ch
prototype updates by Ilya Zakharevich
ilya@math.ohio-state.edu
perl v5.8.8 2005-02-05 1