distinguish $! vaules

[Peter Michael]

Hi,

what is currently the preferred way to distinguish between different
values of $! ? I suppose that %! was created to this end (sample code?)
but should I use Switch(3) instead today?

use Errno qwPOSIX);
use Switch;

open my $fh, "file" or do
{ switch($!)
{ case ENOENT { warn "you should first create the file\n"; }
case EACCES { warn "you are not allowed to see this\n"; }
else { warn "some other error...\n"; }
}
};

Any hints welcome (Anno? ;-).

Best regards,

Peter

 

[Anno Siegel]

Hi,

what is currently the preferred way to distinguish between different
values of $! ? I suppose that %! was created to this end (sample code?)
but should I use Switch(3) instead today?

use Errno qwPOSIX);
use Switch;

open my $fh, "file" or do
{ switch($!)
{ case ENOENT { warn "you should first create the file\n"; }
case EACCES { warn "you are not allowed to see this\n"; }
else { warn "some other error...\n"; }
}
};

These are really two questions. One is how to get at the official
name of an error. Here the only answer is "use Errno". The error
numbers (the numeric side of $!) and the error texts (the string side
of $!) are can vary from system to system.

The other question is how to branch on conditions (whether these are
error conditions ore something else). The Switch module can be used
for that, but is not really necessary. There are many other branching
methods in Perl. The program snippet above could also be written:

use Errno qw( OSIX);

my %msg = (
ENOENT() => "you should first create the file\n",
EACCES() => "you are not allowed to see this\n",
default => "some other error...\n",
);
my $file = 'gibsnich/wirdnix';
open my $fh, $file or warn $msg{ $! + 0} || $msg{ default};

Anno