IMHO, what you have in the OP is "pretty standard fare" for making sure you know as soon as something does not go as expected (e.g. the target of a chdir fails because it happens to be an NFS path that suddenly isn't available).

I do appreciate TGI's approach, even though it looks a little more cumbersome than it really is. Another approach, if most of your "or die ..." clauses are tacked onto the same functions (system, chdir, a few others?), you could just set up a module with customized versions (and customized names) for these frequently used functions -- e.g. instead of calling "system()", use a module that you call "Safe.pm", and call "safe_system()", which would take an extra arg (either first or last) to supply a message for the "die".

BTW, I noticed, on reading the Fatal docs for the first time, that it does not support redefining/overriding the system() function, which seems to limit its value in your case.

In reply to Re: Too many "or die" clauses? by graff
in thread Too many "or die" clauses? by Anonymous Monk

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