you could always "warn" instead of die

... except that you'd then be warning even on "expected" conditions. Earlier in this thread it was said that having no config file was a reasonable and expected condition.

If you have warnings disabled, you could do:

open F, "config.txt" or $! !~ /no such file/i or die "config.txt error
+: $!";
... process F ...;
close F;
[download]

Warnings will have to be turned off because you'll be doing I/O on a closed filehandle. My other code posted earlier doesn't have that issue.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.