I currently use a logging object I wrote to manage messages. When something's going wrong, my rule of the thumb is to write the message to the log object, then to return undef. something like :
use strict;
use warnings;
package bozo;
use Message;
sub failing {
my $log = Message->new ;
$log->set_error("this always fails");
return
}
package main;
use Message;
my $log = Message->new ;
# I sometimes do this
eval { `touch /toto` };
if ($@) { $log->set_error("it failed! : $@") ;
# or this
if ( not 0 ) {
$log->set_error("it failed too!")
}
# now calling the failing sub up there:
if ( not bozo::failing() ) {
print $log->get_message();
}
Whatever I do with the error string, the Message object also spits out errors and messages to the log, this way (PID, date and time, the the message):
[25435] 2006-02-21 14:27:20 : ERROR : DBD::Pg::st execute failed: exec
+ute on disconnected handle at ../lib/Archiver/Job.pm line 96.