Re^9: Modern Perl Programming Highs and Lows

Those things you mention fall into the "doctor, it hurts when I do this" category. Normal code shouldn't need DESTROY at all, and if it does, it should be extremely careful. And if you're creating complex overloaded exception objects, you have already lost. What does your test module's overloaded $SIG{__DIE__} do with a module that itself overloads $SIG{__DIE__}?

Sure, it's possible to build ever-more-complicated exception mechanisms with lots of corner cases, and to require more testing modules to control them. Sometimes you may even be forced into this silliness. But since you're inviting a world of hurt by doing so, you should ask yourself first whether a simpler solution could work.

Comment on Re^9: Modern Perl Programming Highs and Lows

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Re^10: Modern Perl Programming Highs and Lows by diotalevi (Canon) on May 11, 2009 at 02:13 UTC
No, none of this is "it hurts doctor" stuff. It's quite normal to have exception objects. It's normal for exception objects to have stringification. It's unusual but not not bad to have a destructor. It is bad to fail to protect your caller against $@ clobbering but mistakes can happen. It's pretty unusual to see your tests $SIG{__DIE__} get overridden and it's worth automating the instrumentation of that happening. Mostly, I really like Test::Exception because with perl, you must be paranoid and this lets me outsource my paranoia. ⠤⠤ ⠙⠊⠕⠞⠁⠇⠑⠧⠊	[reply]

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Re^10: Modern Perl Programming Highs and Lows
by diotalevi (Canon) on May 11, 2009 at 02:13 UTC

No, none of this is "it hurts doctor" stuff. It's quite normal to have exception objects. It's normal for exception objects to have stringification. It's unusual but not not bad to have a destructor. It is bad to fail to protect your caller against $@ clobbering but mistakes can happen. It's pretty unusual to see your tests $SIG{__DIE__} get overridden and it's worth automating the instrumentation of that happening. Mostly, I really like Test::Exception because with perl, you must be paranoid and this lets me outsource my paranoia.

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