Re^2: Is this the most elegant way to code directory lookup?

die "Error:$!" unless (-d $srcdir && -d $destdir );

As I mentioned before, $! won't have anything useful in it at this point, so there's no reason to include it in the error message.

Why not make the error messages a little clearer.

die "$srcdir is not a valid directory\n" unless -d $srcdir;
die "$destdir is not a valid directory\n" unless -d $destdir;
[download]

Update: Looks like I'm wrong.

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Re^3: Is this the most elegant way to code directory lookup? by hv (Prior) on Oct 02, 2006 at 10:18 UTC
Update: Looks like I'm wrong. I disagree: just because someone tried it once and got a useful error message doesn't change the fact that `$!` is not documented to be defined at this point. `$!` may well get set differently (or not at all) in different circumstances, when testing different files, or on a different O/S, or depending on phase of the moon for all we know. Your suggested clearer error messages are definitively more correct; the only change I might make (at the risk of getting too clever) is to avoid the duplication with something like: `die "$_ is not a valid directory\n" for grep !-d, $srcdir, $destdir;` [download] Hugo	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re^3: Is this the most elegant way to code directory lookup?
by hv (Prior) on Oct 02, 2006 at 10:18 UTC

Update: Looks like I'm wrong.

I disagree: just because someone tried it once and got a useful error message doesn't change the fact that $! is not documented to be defined at this point.

$! may well get set differently (or not at all) in different circumstances, when testing different files, or on a different O/S, or depending on phase of the moon for all we know.

Your suggested clearer error messages are definitively more correct; the only change I might make (at the risk of getting too clever) is to avoid the duplication with something like:

  die "$_ is not a valid directory\n" for grep !-d, $srcdir, $destdir;
[download]

Hugo

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