I must be missing something... My Perl must be a tad rusty!

When I call send on a Mail::Builder::Simple object, the program dies and dumps a string with a string saying something to the effect of no SMTP server, and a trace dump. OK, now I know this function indicates failure by throwing an exception.

So I write: 

    my $mailer = new Mail::Builder::Simple::;
    eval { $mailer->send (
       mail_client => { mailer => 'SMTP' },
       to => 'john@dlugosz.com',
       from => $form->param_value('email'),
       subject => "[Contact Form]" . $form->param_value('subject'),
       plaintext => $form->param_value('message')
       ) };
    if ($@) {
       my $err= $@;
       $c->log->info("what is this?" . ref($err));
       $c->log->error("return value from email is:\n $err");
       $c->stash->{form_error}= "$err";
       }
    else {
       $c->stash->{form_sent}= 1;
       }

[download]
And I get, no matter how I look at it, an empty string for $@ that tests as true. Where did my huge error message go? If it's an object, I expect it to show a ref and stringify when interpolated.

Where did the error info go?

In reply to Where did $@ go? by John M. Dlugosz

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.