Re: Perl gurus: why do we need Scalar::Util?

Johannes> please do not let my die dumb: what is this "blessed" thing all about? And Johannes> why do we need it in the private-Error.pm??

Ugh. Just took a peek for the first time at the "next" branch, and I see the dangerous syntactic-sugar try { } catch { }. Sorry for not noticing that earlier.

While that syntax looks like it would make things easier in theory, in practice it is a source of leak-after-leak because it creates a closure for the two blocks, and that can easily lead to a circular reference for long-running tools. This would be of some concern if someone writes a mod_perl module or a standalone webserver that doesn't exec itself to clean up (which it shouldn't need).

So, if there's going to be rewrite, the first part would be to eliminate the try { } catch { } sugar, and replace it with more traditional exception catchers.

        eval { };
        if ($@) { ... }

Note that I'm *not* suggesting not to use Error.pm - that's a great means by which to create hierarchical error classes that stringify nicely and carry context on the error. I'm just saying to throw out the try/catch syntax helper.

Sorry about that.  If it's any consequence, we got it right in Perl 6. :)