use strict;
use warnings;

my (%Numbers,$i);
my @Values = qw/first second third/;
$Numbers{$_} = ++$i for @Values;

for my $cur (@Values) {

    next if eval {
        my $value  = &get_number  ($cur);
        $value    .= &get_ordinal ($cur);
        # more, more..
    
        print "$cur is $value\n";
    };
    
    print $@;
}

sub get_number
{
  my $value = shift;
  if ($value eq "second") {
        die "bad value";
  }
  return $Numbers{$value};
}

sub get_ordinal
{
  return substr(shift, -2);
}


##</code><code>##

first is 1st
bad value at noname.pl line 25.
third is 3rd