What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

You should do like perlstyle says and include all relevant information in the error message. In this case that includes the filename: 

my $file = "home/you/your.file";
open (FILE, "< $file") or die "Cannot read '$file': $!";

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If this appears within a function I would normally use Carp and then confess to the sad situation...

In reply to Re (tilly) 3: hash/array by tilly
in thread hash/array by malaga

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