Perhaps the OP is using a ANSI/Curses library or set of routines written by someone else. It might (doubtful) even be CGI related. I can't grok these functions as something I've seen before, but that appears to be the plan -- they don't show up on Google so they are surely custom.

To the opening poster -- Anyhow, the question about die taking arguments is very very basic, and is covered by most Perl books. It seems you need more basic Perl knowledge, and need to be reminded that good books exist -- die is covered early in most books. Web sites should not be ground zero for your first stabs at a new language. Try O'Reilly's Llama or Camel books. We'll be glad to help once you pick up the basic concepts, else you will just be asking questions all day and not really learning on your own.

Since I am a nice guy, try this with this strange "font" code, it might work, might not:

die (font( {-size=>5, -color=>'Lime'} , $DBI::errstr ));
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