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perlevalperlvar

What does the special variable $@ mean in Perl?

I'm trying to understand the following piece of code:

sub foo {
    ...
    if ( $@ ) {
        ...
        die $@;
    }
}
Solution

  • perldoc -f eval:

    If there is a syntax error or runtime error, or a "die" statement is executed, an undefined value is returned by "eval", and $@ is set to the error message. If there was no error, $@ is guaranteed to be a null string.

    See also perldoc perlvar.