http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=423426


in reply to Re^2: Handling non-fatal method error strings without exceptions or globals?
in thread Handling non-fatal method error strings without exceptions or globals?

Just off the top of my head, I would do something like this:

package Result; use overload 'bool' => \&as_bool, '""' => \&stringify; sub new { if ($_[0] eq __PACKAGE__) { shift; } my $self = { as_bool => $_[0], string => $_[1], }; bless $self, __PACKAGE__; $self; } sub as_bool { my $self = shift; $self->{as_bool}; } sub stringify { my $self = shift; $self->{string}; } 1;

Then you can use it like this:

require Result; sub complex_function { # ... if ($error_message) { return Result->new(undef, $error_message); } return Result->new(1); }

With this, the caller wouldn't change much at all:

unless (my $r = complex_function()) { print "Error received: $r\n"; }

Hope that helps. (Completely untested ;->) Also, the way it is now, Result is not a class you can easily derive from ... I leave that as an excersise for other monks ;->