Re: A sub to return the number of listeners on a Shoutcast server

die "Cannot read the buffer. $!" unless defined $n;

Although I don't run "Good Vibes Radio", nor have any experience with it, I wouldn't use "die" on an error, since you're in a sub. I'd rather return the error message and if none, the number of listeners. If you'd use this sub routine in some script to generate some HTML, the user would at least get a somewhat decent error. (if of course you do something usefull with the returned error ;))

Just my €0.02

--
b10m

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Re: Re: A sub to return the number of listeners on a Shoutcast server by simonm (Vicar) on Jan 03, 2004 at 17:52 UTC
I wouldn't use "die" on an error, since you're in a sub... the user would at least get a somewhat decent error. I'd disagree; since all sorts of other things could go wrong, like problems in Net::HTTP, I'd vote for a "die" and using an eval {} block around it if you want to catch the errors and handle them in some specific way.	[reply]
Re: Re: A sub to return the number of listeners on a Shoutcast server by Omeron (Novice) on Jan 04, 2004 at 20:12 UTC
Thanks for your help. Initially the sub just got used in a locally running program, so it didn't matter if it died like that, but if running in a CGI application then it would cause trouble as you point out. Good call.	[reply]