http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=443610


in reply to Re^2: Grabbing Variable Names
in thread Grabbing Variable Names

Long story short is that a forward declaration doesn't create a glob. You can try this by doing

sub foo; print ref \$::{foo}; # "SCALAR" sub bar { 1 }; print ref \$::{bar}; # "GLOB" sub baz; print ref \$::{baz}; # "GLOB" $baz = $baz; # Just to mention the symbol "baz".
As it turns out if you inspect this a bit further the prototype of the subroutine (or "-1" if no prototype) is stored instead of a glob if no glob has been created already. When a symbol with the same name as the forward declaration a glob is created. So when you do *fn = $::{hello} you actually assign -1 to *fn making *fn aliased to *{-1}. (*{something} is just the "safe" way to write *something for symbols that aren't generally recognized as symbols by Perl and can be used with any sigil, like &{subname}.)
sub foo; *{-1} = sub { 'oh' }; # Create a sub called "-1". print &{-1}(); # "oh" *bar = $::{foo}; # Really? print defined &bar; # "1" Huh? So now &bar is defined # even though &foo isn't? print bar(); # "oh" #$foo; # But all this would change if you # uncommented "$foo;".
Sneaky, eh?

ihb

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