die

See the current Perl documentation for die.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

die - raise an exception or bail out

die LIST

Outside an eval(), prints the value of LIST to STDERR and exits with the current value of $! (errno). If $! is 0, exits with the value of ($? >> 8) (backtick `command` status). If ($? >> 8) is 0, exits with 255. Inside an eval(), the error message is stuffed into $@ and the eval() is terminated with the undefined value. This makes die() the way to raise an exception.

Equivalent examples:

    die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n" unless chdir '/usr/spool/news';
    chdir '/usr/spool/news' or die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n"

If the value of EXPR does not end in a newline, the current script line number and input line number (if any) are also printed, and a newline is supplied. Hint: sometimes appending ", stopped" to your message will cause it to make better sense when the string "at foo line 123" is appended. Suppose you are running script ``canasta''.

    die "/etc/games is no good";
    die "/etc/games is no good, stopped";

produce, respectively

    /etc/games is no good at canasta line 123.
    /etc/games is no good, stopped at canasta line 123.

See also exit() and warn().

If LIST is empty and $@ already contains a value (typically from a previous eval) that value is reused after appending "\t...propagated". This is useful for propagating exceptions:

    eval { ... };
    die unless $@ =~ /Expected exception/;

If $@ is empty then the string "Died" is used.

You can arrange for a callback to be run just before the die() does its deed, by setting the $SIG{__DIE__} hook. The associated handler will be called with the error text and can change the error message, if it sees fit, by calling die() again. See perlman:perlvar for details on setting %SIG entries, and eval BLOCK for some examples.

Note that the $SIG{__DIE__} hook is called even inside eval()ed blocks/strings. If one wants the hook to do nothing in such situations, put

        die @_ if $^S;

as the first line of the handler (see 1).