Detecting the lexical variables involved in a code segment by repeatedly evaling and modifying the same section of code based on $@ until compiles successfully is, frankly, weird. Especially when, to get things to be compiled in the right context you had to do some magic with coderefs in @INC.

Once I've got Pixie good and stable, I really should go and revisit Preface...

You've seen Preface (PERl REFACtoring Engine) then?

Actually no - where is it (the sourceforge page doesn't appear to have any code)?

I'd just played around with writing my own for a day or so a few years back, but the code rapidly became too evil for my tastes :-)

Ah yes, nothing actually got released, but I thought there was something in the CVS. However, if I go back to it I'll likely be throwing everything away anyway, having learned what I need from the spike.

Ah yes, just checked again, CVS definitely has working code. Take a look at 'Refactor.pm' for the basic nastiness of how the method works. Reflex::Def::Module is also a source of scary magic...