UPDATE:I discovered Test::Fatal and used it like so:

like(exception{ $checker->_get_event_data('qwerty.pl') }, qr/Failed to
+ retrieve data from file/, 'file does not exist');
[download]

logf subroutine required following adjustment:

  $logger->fatal("(Line: $line) " .  $error );
  print "\n";
  open (STDOUT, '>/dev/null'); #squelch duplicate error output
  die $error;
[download]

END UPDATE

I've got a simple subroutine utility that I've been using with all my scripts that prints out the details of a script failure using the Log::Log4Perlmodule:

sub logf {
  my $error = shift;
  my $line = shift;
  if (!$line) {
    $line = [caller(0)]->[2];
  }
  $logger->fatal("(Line: $line) " .  $error);
  die "\n";
}
[download]

I want to test the following bit of code:

sub _get_event_data {
  my $self = shift;
  my $file = shift;
  my $data;
  eval { $data = retrieve($file); };
  if ($@) {
    logf('Failed to retrieve data from file'); ### Line that calls fai
+lure subroutine above
  }
  my $existing_events = $data->{existing_events};
  return $existing_events;
}
[download]

I want to test to see if the module returns the correct error messages. Here is the test:

throws_ok{ $checker->_get_event_data('qwerty.pl') } qr/Failed to retri
+eve data from file/, 'file does not exist';
[download]

The test never passes, however because it has no idea what the $logger object printed. I tried changing the logf() function to:

die ($logger->fatal("(Line: $line) " .  $error));

This did not get the test to pass, however. The following worked but the test script dies and the remaining tests don't run:

 $logger->fatal("(Line: $line) " .  $error);
 die "$error\n";
[download]

So am I going to have to abandon my user of the Log4Perl module to be able to test the errors my script generates? Is there something else I might try?