die or croak

McA has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks,

can anybody give me advice on the following issue:

To throw exceptions in modules which will be used by others, should I use die or Carp::croak? And when then why?

I have the feeling that reporting the file and line number of the module (using die) exposes some kind of implementation detail which should be hidden, isn't it?

Best regards
McA

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Re: die or croak by moritz (Cardinal) on Aug 09, 2013 at 19:26 UTC
If you get an exception because you misused the API of a module, you usually want to know where in your the error is, so you're happier when the module called `croak()`. Of course that concept breaks down when you write a module that uses another module which uses croak() -- the errors will come from your module, not from your module user's code. In the case of internal errors, modules should use die, or maybe even Carp::confess. (Oh, and if (as a user) you want to get a backtrace no matter what, use Carp::Always). Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: die or croak by Corion (Patriarch) on Aug 09, 2013 at 19:28 UTC
Note that you can exempt your module from `croak` by setting up `@CARP_NOT`. That way, your module will be invisible to `carp`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: die or croak by McA (Priest) on Aug 09, 2013 at 19:32 UTC
Ahh, that sounds intersting. Can you give some pointers or examples? Regards McA	[reply]
Re^4: die or croak by Corion (Patriarch) on Aug 09, 2013 at 19:44 UTC
Re^5: die or croak by McA (Priest) on Aug 09, 2013 at 20:21 UTC
Re^2: die or croak by McA (Priest) on Aug 09, 2013 at 19:35 UTC
Thank you for the fast reply.	[reply]

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