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;

AUTHOR

Lionel.Cons@cern.ch

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