Error information specific to the current operating system. At the moment, this differs from$! under only VMS, OS/2, and Win32 (and for MacPerl). On all other platforms,$^E is always just the same as$!.
Under VMS,$^E provides the VMS status value from the last system error. This is more specific information about the last system error than that provided by$!. This is particularly important when$! is set toEVMSERR.
Under OS/2,$^E is set to the error code of the last call to OS/2 API either via CRT, or directly from perl.
Under Win32,$^E always returns the last error information reported by the Win32 callGetLastError() which describes the last error from within the Win32 API. Most Win32-specific code will report errors via$^E. ANSI C and Unix-like calls seterrno and so most portable Perl code will report errors via$!.
Caveats mentioned in the description of$! generally apply to$^E, also. (Mnemonic: Extra error explanation.)
Also see"Error Indicators".
Perldoc Browser is maintained by Dan Book (DBOOK). Please contact him via theGitHub issue tracker oremail regarding any issues with the site itself, search, or rendering of documentation.
The Perl documentation is maintained by the Perl 5 Porters in the development of Perl. Please contact them via thePerl issue tracker, themailing list, orIRC to report any issues with the contents or format of the documentation.