I am writing an object. Upon initialization of the object, if there is a problem for whatever reason (loading data or anything) I want to return null and put an error in $!. Here is my object:

package coolobject;

use strict;

our @ISA = qw/Exporter/;
our @EXPORTER = qw/new/;

sub new{
    my $class = shift;
    my $self;

    $self->{name} = 'new';
    bless ($self);

    if ($self->loaddata()){
        return $self;
    }else{
        $! = "Error loading data!";
        undef $self;
        return undef;
    }
}

sub loaddata{
    my $self = shift;
    return undef;
}
[download]

and here is where I am using the object

my $obj = coolobject->new or die "$!";
[download]

When I run it though, I don't get any value in $!. How am I supposed to do this?

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