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;

##</code><code>##

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