I must say I despise croak and I prefer the return (of complex:hash/object) values in order to signify errors or success. I disagree with Conway's subjective assertion that Constantly checking return values for failure clutters your code with validation statements, often greatly decreasing its readability. (number 8) :

• especially when the way to check the exception is the eval. Often nested (666)!
• from looking at Try::Tiny's source code, I can see it is just an eval wrapper.
• Carp's manual states that croak does not return objects (as in a "proper" exception) and when it is given an object it calls die or warn which I think looses the stacktrace. A big price to pay for getting a bit more information out of the errors.
• Consequently, using strings instead of an exception object, is one-dimensional: has error or not. Unless one resorts to string comparisons to check what error it was which is the safest way back to BASICs.
• eval is relatively cheap if it's used once especially when the block is expensive (as NERDVANA has benchmarked) but what happens when code is full of evals for simple file-open-and-read operations? (Conway's number 8).
• Another aspect of using the eval/croak exception handling, is how the perl debugger handles eval. If it's transparent, fine but if it produces an eyesore then there is another point to consider (I can't say: I have never used the debugger).

The bottomline for me, is that until Perl manages proper exception handling I return error integers or hashes and avoid recommending "exceptions" (as Conway does) which are not the real thing. What's the real thing? For me, it must include objects and avoid evals.

bw, bliako