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 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 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                       2006-06-14                          Fatal(3)