My personal preference would be to use Carp. 

use Carp qw(carp cluck);
# Print the message with the file and line number included
carp("There was an error ['" . $dbh->errstr . "'] in the insert") if D
+EBUG && $debug;

# Print the message with the stacktrace included
cluck("There was an error ['" . $dbh->errstr . "'] in the insert") if 
+DEBUG && $debug;

[download]
Depending on the layout of your code the line number sometimes isn't enough and you start printing information about who called you. Carp can also upgrade carp to cluck by running perl as follows: 
    perl -MCarp=verbose script.pl

[download]

Alternately, you could get the current file and line number like this: 

$context = sprintf '[%s:%d]', __FILE__, __LINE__;

[download]
Or if you wanted to use the stack trace provided by Carp you could get that format like this: 
my $message = sprintf "There was an error ['%s'] in the insert", $dbh-
+>errstr;
# Print the message with the file and line number included
print Carp::shortmess($message);

# Print the message with the stacktrace included
print Carp::longmess($message);

[download]

In reply to Re: Determining a line number the error occurs on by imp
in thread Determining a line number the error occurs on by Anonymous Monk

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