perl -E ' use strict; use warnings; my $output; say "successful statement"; $output = eval {my $c = 4 + 5;}; printout ($output, $@); say "division by 0"; $output = eval {my $c = 4/0;}; printout ($output, $@); say "statement with die"; $output = eval {die "I am dieing\n";}; printout ($output, $@); sub printout { my ($out, $diag) = @_; say $out, "\t", $diag, "\n" if defined $out; say "\t\t$diag" unless defined $out; } ' successful statement 9 division by 0 Illegal division by zero at -e line 12. statement with die I am dieing