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 excep-
tions 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 maywrap 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 calledin void context-that is, when their return values are ignored. For
exampleuse 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.chprototype updates by Ilya Zakharevich ilya@math.ohio-state.edu
perl v5.8.8 2001-09-21 Fatal(3pm)