Fatal(3p)        Perl Programmers Reference Guide       Fatal(3p)


NAME
       Fatal - replace functions with equivalents which succeed
       or die

SYNOPSIS
           use Fatal qw(open close);

           sub juggle { . . . }
           import Fatal 'juggle';

DESCRIPTION
       "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
       successful.  This lets you use these functions without
       having to test their return values explicitly on each
       call.  Exceptions can be caught using "eval{}".  See
       perlfunc and perlvar for details.

       The do-or-die equivalents are set up simply by calling
       Fatal's "import" routine, passing it the names of the
       functions to be replaced.  You may wrap both user-defined
       functions and overridable CORE operators (except "exec",
       "system" which cannot be expressed via prototypes) in this
       way.

       If the symbol ":void" appears in the import list, then
       functions 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;

BUGS
       You should not fatalize functions that are called in list
       context, because this module tests whether a function has
       failed by testing the boolean truth of its return value in
       scalar context.

AUTHOR
       Lionel Cons (CERN).

       Prototype updates by Ilya Zakharevich
       <ilyaATmath.edu>.





perl v5.10.0                2008-09-30                          1