I think he means situations where he is denied read access to a directory:

$ echo $EUID
1000

$ ls -ld /var/log/apache2
drwxr-x--- 2 root adm 12288 Mar 18 06:25 /var/log/apache2
$ ls -l /var/log/apache2
ls: cannot open directory /var/log/apache2: Permission denied
$ perl -E 'say ((-e q-/var/log/apache2/access.log-) ? "exists" : "not 
+exists: $!")'
not exists: Permission denied

# echo $EUID
0
# perl -E 'say ((-e q-/var/log/apache2/access.log-) ? "exists" : "not 
+exists: $!")'
exists

[download]

He probably just should examine $!

In reply to Re^8: perl file status and sudo by Anonymous Monk
in thread perl file status and sudo by Saved

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