Have you tried looking at $ftp->message()?

++lestrrat for the correct answer.

In case you're wondering GhodMode, the trick is that the Net::FTP module has a 'ISA' relationship with Net::Cmd which means that in addition to the methods listed on the Net::FTP man page, you can also use the methods listed in the Net::Cmd man page.

If you're checking whether a specific error occurred, you should use the $ftp->code() method which returns the three digit error code - this should be consistent for RFC compliant FTP servers whereas the text message may change. But if you just want to print out a diagnostic message when something goes wrong then $ftp->message() is what you want.

If you set the Debug option to a true value, then the errors will go to STDERR.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::FTP;
my $ftp = Net ::FTP->new("some.host.name", Debug => 1);
$ftp->login("anonymous",'me@here.there');
$ftp->cwd("/pub");
$ftp->get("that.file");
$ftp->quit;
[download]

$! is probably of most use to you:

$ftp->get("/that/camel/off/my/back") or die "Blerch: $!\n";
[download]

CU
Robartes-

Get is the only command that will return useful information in $!. If the file doesn't exist, it would print "Bad file descriptor at filename line x." to STDERR.

Oops!

my $ftp = Net::FTP->new("some.host.name") or die $!; would print "Invalid argument at filename line x." to STDERR.