This is a great question, and I look forward to others replies to it. The big problem is that there is no one size fits all answer to this question. If your perl is a CGI script you don't want to die before you've printed out some error message. In other cases die is just fine. If you've got a database connection open you may want to clean up so an eval block is crucial. For the purposes of simple CGI's I've used the following general purpose "bomb" routine:

#---------------------------------------------------
# subroutine bomb
#        a somewhat ungracefull way to end the execution of the cgi
sub bomb
{
    my $error_text = shift;

    print "\n<B>Ho Boy! A nasty error has occured:</B> "; 
        #extra \n to close off the HTTP header
    print $error_text;
    print "\n";
    my @mail;

    if ($MAIL_BOMB_LIST ne '') {
        &printbomb(\@mail,$error_text);
        @BombRecipients = split (/,/, $MAIL_BOMB_LIST);

        my $submission = join '',@mail;
        $submission = "\n\n".$submission;
        $sent = &send_mail ($BombSMTPServer, $submission, 'CGI_Bomber@
+acme.com', "CGI $ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'} bombed.", $BombReplyto, @BombReci
+pients);
    }
    exit;
}

# load error message and backtrace into @$array
sub printbomb
{
    my $array = shift;
    my $message = shift;
    
    my($syserror) = $!; 
    
    push @$array, <<"EOM";
The CGI script $ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'} seems to be having trouble!

Error Message: $message
Sys Error is: $syserror

EOM

    my $i = 2;    # start back 2 so as not to print bomb & printbomb s
+tack frames.
    push @$array, "Backtrace:\n";
    push @$array, "    Subroutine name   | Line |                     
+  File                      \n";
    push @$array, "----------------------|------|---------------------
+----------------------------\n";
    while(($pack,$file,$line,$subname) = caller($i++)) {
        push @$array, sprintf("%21s |%5s |%50s\n",$subname,$line,$file
+);
    }
}
[download]

This code is obviously not the neatest, but it's very nice for debugging. It simply prints out the error message, but then e-mails the stack backtrace to the emails in the global $MAIL_BOMB_LIST

-I went outside... and then I came back in!!!!

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.