In this case, cat outputs its own error with what would be $!.

cat: file-that-does-not-exist: No such file or directory
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It might be cleaner to "exit 1 if $?" rather than die to avoid the useless "Died" message (but then you don't get the line number).

Update: Hmmm, when I hit 'reply', the node I replied to said only, Do you deem "Died at x.pl line y." acceptable?

   exit 1 if $?;
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And no, the program won't be silent. "cat" is perfectly able to tell the user why it can't read the file.

True, I overlooked cat's error message. It'll still be silent for spawning errors, although those will be far less common.

I'm not sure what you mean by "spawning errors", but if 'cat' happens to be chasing mice outside my $PATH, Perl will tell me:

    $ PATH=/tmp /usr/bin/perl -wE '$_ = `cat /etc/motd`'
    Can't exec "cat": No such file or directory at -e line 1.
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