Watch the precedence of your ors! Compare the following lines of code: 

my $foo = $bar || die "Bela Lugosi is dead: $!";
my $FOO = $BAR or die "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead";

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s0ttle's code looks pretty good (but I haven't run it), and dragonchild's point about moving variable declarations to get the smallest scope possible is good too. But their use of  open() || die makes me nervous.

Remember that || has a very high precedence and or has a low precedence. In the code at the top of my post, line 1 dies if $bar evaluates to false; line 2 dies if the assignment to $FOO fails.

I've been burned by using the || die syntax before. I kept doing it after some kindly monk (I forget who) warned me not to, and doomed myself to spend much time debugging as a result.


Like Cassandra, TGI says moo

In reply to or before ||, for || comes before or by TGI
in thread beginner syntax question by vectorvillain

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