function returning true or errors

I am writing a function that performs some actions. I would like to return true if the actions succeed, or return an error message if the actions fail. How should I go about it? The following code doesn't do it, because the returned error message is interpreted as a boolean "true" (I think that's what's happening): if (custom_function() == true) { print "Custom Function succeeded!"; } else { print custom_function(); } I would actually rather just have the error message generated by the script that calls the function, but the function performs some logic that determines what kind of error message to give. I was thinking of having the function return "1" if succeeds, "2" if error code A, or "3" if error code B, and then a switch statement could decide what to do in the calling script -- but does this sound sloppy? Erik ---- Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown pricee@hhbrown.com