Thanks. Will make sure I provide a link in future. As for trying the script, i did. in the open statement, i pass the file name as a variable

    use strict;
    use warnings;

    my $offset = 1;

    # create a file handle from the file name

    open my $fh, '<', $filename or die $!;

    # call seek, with the new file handle we just created

    seek $fh, $offset, 0 or die "Report seek error,           
    offset:$offset - $!";
[download]

Now when i pass a non numeric offset, i get an error that says argument non numeric but i dont get the die error message and the exit value is 0. If i pass a numeric offset things work ok. If i put the file handle inside quotes like the below

    
seek "$fh", $offset, 0 or die "Report seek error,           
    offset:$offset - $!";
[download]

now when i pass a non numeric offset, the script dies and throws the die error message and the exit value is non zero. this is what i want but i don't understand why i need the quotes.