In relation to your first question, the method that you are using seems fine.

In relation to your second question, the 1 in the die message is returned by the print in sub Two and then returned by the do{}.

To get a more useful error message you could do this:

    open TST, "$var1" or die do {
        One();
        Two();
        "Couldn't open file $var1: $!.\n";
    };
[download]

--
John.