Completely Useless

[btrott]

So this is probably the most useless module ever, but I thought it was kind of fun, because... I don't know. I like writing things that seem like English but are actually Perl, I guess.

Usage:

    use Silly::Die;
    EXPR or die trying;

Where EXPR is, of course, an expression. For example:

    open FILE, "foo" or die trying;

    package Silly::Die;

    sub import {
        my $class  = shift;
        my $caller = caller;
        no strict 'refs';
        *{"${caller}::trying"} = \&{"${class}::trying"};
    }

    sub trying { $! }

    1;

[btrott]

Hey, you know what'd be neat? To customize the error message. Sure, it's still just as useless, but that's okay. So here's the new version:

    package Silly::Die;
    use strict;
    use vars qw/$OUTPUT/;

    sub import {
        my $class  = shift;
        my $caller = caller;
        no strict 'refs';
        *{"${caller}::trying"} = \&{"${class}::trying"};
        $OUTPUT = shift if @_ && ref $_[0] eq "CODE";
    }

    sub trying { $OUTPUT ? $OUTPUT->($!) : $! }

    1;

Usage is the same as before, but if you want an extra special output function, try this:

    use Silly::Die sub { qq(I died with: "@_") };
    open FILE, "foo" or die trying;

Prints:

  I died with: "No such file or directory" at ./test.pl line 9.

[mwp]

bond@russia:~$ perl -I/usr/local/lib/m4 \
    -MSecret::Agent -e 'save->world()'

died trying at line 007 (eval 1).

I guess he forgot the -w flag.