use Carp;
sub simpleopen {
    my ($mode, $file) = @_;
    my $fh;
    open($fh, $mode, $file) or croak $!;
    return $fh
}
my $logfile = simpleopen('>>', "$0.log");

##</code><code>##

use IO::File;
my $logfile = IO::File->new("$0.log", 'a');

##</code><code>##

2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas'
Segmentation fault
2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$