It's possible to resume, sort of. See chromatic's Resumable Exceptions (sort of).

use Carp qw(croak);
use English qw(-no_match_vars);
use Net::FTP;
use Time::HiRes qw(sleep);

use strict;

my $MAX_TRIES = 15;

my $ftp;

TRY:
for my $try (1..$MAX_TRIES) {
    # If successful, we're done.
    eval {
        $ftp = Net::FTP->new("some.host.name", Debug => 0)
            or die "Cannot connect to some.host.name: $@";
        last TRY;
    };

    # Report non-recoverable failure if no more tries
    croak( $EVAL_ERROR ) if $try == $MAX_TRIES;
    
    # Try again after a nap (approximate fibonacci)
    sleep( rand (1.618 ** $try) );
}
[download]

    eval {
        $ftp = Net::FTP->new("some.host.name", Debug => 0)
            or die "Cannot connect to some.host.name: $@";
        last TRY;
    }
[download]

I'm curious about your use of $@ om the second line of the eval. How would $@ be set without causing an exception that would throw control outside the eval?

If the die "Cannot ..." ever occurs, wouldn't $@ be empty?

Surely $@ is only useful outside the eval?

Also, eval {} is a statement and should be followed by a semicolon if further statements are to follow in the current block. Your code doesn't compile.

-David

That is explained in the documentation for Net::FTP.

If the constructor fails undef will be returned and an error message will be in $@.

All other Net::FTP methods save their error message in $ftp->message.

I've also sometimes wondered about the logic of this. Nevertheless, that's the way it is.

- Miller

I agree too, that 'eval'+module documentation is the guaranteed right way

PS could you provide example