Is it better to croak() or to die() when something bad happens in Perl?

Question

perlcritic complaints that the following code, some boilerplate DBI stuff that works perfectly fine, should croak instead of die:

# Connect to database
my $db_ha         


        

Answer 1

Still. This example may want to use croak if the connection parameters came directly from the inputs to the function as others pointed out.

If you write a test for yourself that triggers the exception then you will be your own client and appreciate which is better.

If it is very hard to test error condition it may be a case for die over croak. But any parameter validating errors should use croak.