Yeah, you're right, looks like I got them the wrong way around . As for talking to the end-user from a module, I think using carp for that is an elegant solution, especially when it's something that can be toggled on and off using a flag. For example:
package Foo;
use strict;
use warnings;
sub new
{
my($class, $debug) = @_;
my $self = {};
bless($self, $class);
if($debug)
{ $self->{'Debug'} = 1; }
return $self;
}
sub bar
{
my($self, $hashref, @arguments) = @_;
unless(ref($hashref) eq 'HASH')
{
if($debug)
{ carp "ERROR: first argument to \'bar\' must be a hashref"; }
return;
}
#insert code here
return $result;
}
I find carp most useful for these cases. Personally I feel a module should never die on its own, that's my decision...