My inclination for something this unlikely to go wrong, and where going wrong is a real error, is to return the set value and throw an exception if there is a problem.

Another common strategy is to return true/false to be interpreted normally and then make the error available elsewhere. For instance DBI does this, with the error in the errstr method.

A cute idea that I just had is that you could return a true value for success, and an overloaded false string for failure.

In reply to Re^3: Need help with a conceptual speed bump by tilly
in thread Need help with a conceptual speed bump by mstone

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