Hi i am using perl and dbi to connect to a database and i have come accross the following error handling example 
$sth = $dbh->prepare(q{SELECT user_name, password from user where user
+_name = ?})
     or die("Database error: $!");

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What i dont understand is what the $! part of the code does. What would happen in this case if the select statement does not succeed?

In reply to error catching by Anonymous Monk

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