I have a perl script

open my $file, '<', $filename or die $!;
seek $file, $offset, 0 or die "Report error - $!";

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when I pass a non numeric offset, the perl script errors out but it doesn't seem to go to the die section. It does not print the "Report error ... message. I got a tip from another forum to add a quote around the file handle of the seek command http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34964638/perl-doesnt-go-to-error-section 

seek "$file" blah blah

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this works and now the perl goes to die and prints the error message. I don't understand why this quote was necessary. Please explain if you can. thanks for your time.

In reply to perl not going to error path by gupr1980

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