How do I prevent my application from being terminated when XMLin croaks?

Question

In my application, I use XML::Simple and use the exported XMLin() to parse XML files. Everything goes well until an invalid file path is used as the parameter for XMLin().

The application is terminated because XML::Simple used die() or some similar method when it was given an invalid file path.

I want my app to continue running even though XML::Simple met a fault. So what should I do?

Answer 1

Wrap the call in a block eval:

eval {
  do_stuff_that_might_die();
  1;
} or do {
  # Only executes if the call died, in case you want
  # to do any cleanup or error handling
  print "It died, but life goes on!\n";
}; # <-- Don't forget the semicolon!

Answer 2

Handle the exception.

General way:

use English qw( -no_match_vars );

eval {
    run_your_code_that_might_die();
};

if ( my $error = $EVAL_ERROR ) {
    die $error unless $error =~ m{some|known|error};
    handle_known_error( $error );
}

English in there is only so I can use $EVAL_ERROR instead of $@.

Generally, check perldoc for eval function.