Greetings, monks. I often use BEGIN blocks to check that any required environment variables are set correctly. This prevents the body of the module or script from needing to worry about whether or not the settings are correct. However, when I call croak() or die() from within a BEGIN block, Perl appends a confusing error message after my die() text, like: 

   BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/sam/xxx/lib/XXX/Script.p
+m line 117.
   Compilation failed in require at bin/yyy_loader line 93.
   BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at bin/yyy_loader line 93.

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This happens even when I call die() with a string ending in a new-line, which usually inhibits the call trace. Seeing this stuff about failed compilation gives my users an excuse not to read the error message patiently explaining that they need to set an environment variable to run the script.

Does anyone know how to avoid this aside from abandoning BEGIN blocks?

-sam

In reply to BEGIN and die(), an ugly combination by samtregar

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