If you must use this style for signaling an error then perhaps you should document that gettting an object back (as opposed to undef) is not a guarantee that object construction succeeded

Good point thanks - I shall add that to the documentation.

Returning an object came from advice given by GrandFather in Re: [RFC] Review of module code and POD
"Consider having new return an instance of Bod::CRM with its error field set..."

In reply to Re^2: [RFC] Module code and POD for CPAN by Bod
in thread [RFC] Module code and POD for CPAN by Bod

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