Prints the value of LIST to STDERR. If the last element of LIST does not end in a newline, it appends the same file/line number text as die does.
If the output is empty and $@ already contains a value
(typically from a previous eval) that value is used after appending
"\t...caught"
to $@ . This is useful for staying
almost, but not entirely similar to die.
If $@ is empty, then the string
"Warning: Something's wrong"
is used.
No message is printed if there is a $SIG{__WARN__}
handler
installed. It is the handler's responsibility to deal with the message
as it sees fit (like, for instance, converting it into a
die). Most
handlers must therefore arrange to actually display the
warnings that they are not prepared to deal with, by calling
warn
again in the handler. Note that this is quite safe and will not
produce an endless loop, since __WARN__
hooks are not called from
inside one.
You will find this behavior is slightly different from that of $SIG{__DIE__} handlers (which don't suppress the error text, but can instead call die again to change it).
Using a __WARN__
handler provides a powerful way to silence all
warnings (even the so-called mandatory ones). An example:
- # wipe out *all* compile-time warnings
- BEGIN { $SIG{'__WARN__'} = sub { warn $_[0] if $DOWARN } }
- my $foo = 10;
- my $foo = 20; # no warning about duplicate my $foo,
- # but hey, you asked for it!
- # no compile-time or run-time warnings before here
- $DOWARN = 1;
- # run-time warnings enabled after here
- warn "\$foo is alive and $foo!"; # does show up
See perlvar for details on setting %SIG entries
and for more
examples. See the Carp module for other kinds of warnings using its
carp
and cluck
functions.