From essential practice number eight in Conway's Ten Essential Development Practices, "Throw Exceptions Instead of Returning Special Values or Setting Flags" (also covered in Perl Best Practices, Chapter 13, Error Handling):

The bottom line: regardless of the programmer's (lack of) intention, an error indicator is being ignored. That's not good programming.

Though you may not agree with all Conway's arguments, as indicated at Two Different Languages: Two Similar Books (PBP and CCS) (in the "Some Similar Guidelines Found in Both Books" section), throwing exceptions rather than returning flags seems to have become mainstream error handling advice nowadays.

Update: All 255 Perl Best Practices listed here: Perl Best Practices Summary

In reply to Re: Best practices for handling errors by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread Best practices for handling errors by v_melnik

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