Re: Re: Should a constructor ever return undef? (yes)

[tall_man]

Ok, it looks like the consensus of most of the answers is that returning undef is normal. But I'd still like to make it harder for the unwary programmers to forget to check the return. I'm suggesting to my co-workers that constructors that can return undef be named "fallible_new" instead of just "new". That might be a little obnoxious, but it would help prevent bugs.

[adrianh]

Ok, it looks like the consensus of most of the answers is that returning undef is normal.

Just because something is commonly accepted doesn't mean it's good ;-)

But I'd still like to make it harder for the unwary programmers to forget to check the return.

You might want to look at using the Fatal module. You can use this to force an exception to be thrown if undef is returned.

However, if returning a false value on failure is actually causing problems for you I would strongly consider moving over to an exception throwing style.