The question is how can I force the specific clean up in case of an abnormal exit (i.e. croak) of each helper script?
As always, TIMTOWTDI. Here's one approach (helper script):
use warnings;
use strict;
use Carp;
my $cleanup = sub {
print "helper cleans up after itself!\n";
};
local $SIG{__DIE__} = $cleanup;
print "Hello\n";
croak "bad thing";
print "There\n";
1;
Running that with your main script of the OP gives:
qwurx [shmem] ~ > perl main.pl helper.pl
Hello
helper cleans up after itself!
helper.pl: bad thing at helper.pl line 11
require helper.pl called at main.pl line 6
Done with main
See %SIG. The local __DIE__ handler is made into an anonymous subroutine assigned to a lexical variable in order to not pollute any namespace.
update:
Reading the documentation I linked to, I find the following:
Due to an implementation glitch, the $SIG{__DIE__} hook is called even inside an eval(). Do not use this to rewrite a pending exception in $@ , or as a bizarre substitute for overriding CORE::GLOBAL::die() . This strange action at a distance may be fixed in a future release so that $SIG{__DIE__} is only called if your program is about to exit, as was the original intent. Any other use is deprecated.
So... that might be not that sound an advice as I thought it would be. I disagree with this being an implementation glitch, though. A do file should die in the same way as a use, which is also eval at its core. But it is not clear whether the glitchiness applies to all sorts of eval.
perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'
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