Fatal

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



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 nor-
       mally return a false value when they fail with equivalents which raise
       exceptions if they are not successful.  This lets you use these func-
       tions without having to test their return values explicitly on each
       call.  Exceptions can be caught using "eval{}".	See perlfunc and per-
       lvar 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;

AUTHOR
       Lionel.Cons@cern.ch

       prototype updates by Ilya Zakharevich ilya@math.ohio-state.edu



perl v5.8.8			  2001-09-21			     Fatal(3)