in reply to How can I find the calling object?

This works, but is SOOOO wrong....

It uses the debugger, and some little-documented side-effects of "caller"

#!/usr/bin/perl -w package a; # the caller package sub new { return bless {},shift } sub call { my ($self,$other)=@_; $other->do_something; # calling the other. Notice: no $self } sub back { my $self=shift; print "I've been called back!\n"; print "And I have ",$self->{stuff},"\n"; } package b; # the called package use Data::Dumper; sub new { return bless {},shift } sub do_something { my $p=DB::get_args(); print Dumper($p); # this dumps the arguments of the caller (in this +case, a->call) $p->[0]->back() } package DB; # this MUST be called DB. It triggers magic in "caller" sub get_args { my @a=caller(2); # 2 because 0 is this, 1 is the one that called it, + 2 is the one we need. # no, you can't remove the assignment: the optimizer will kill the l +ine. return [@DB::args]; # @DB::args gets magically set to the param list +. } package main; $a=a->new;$b=b->new; $a->{stuff}='something'; $a->call(b); __END__

Will print:

$VAR1 = [ bless( { 'stuff' => 'something' }, 'a' ), 'b' ]; I've been called back! And I have something

UPDATE: clarified the meaning of the DB package

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Re: Re: How can I find the calling object?
by Joost (Canon) on Nov 18, 2002 at 16:41 UTC
    Very nice :-)

    Ok, so you can. That still doesnt mean that you should.

    In fact, I'm really curious why you would ever want this (except in the debugger ofcourse).

    -- Joost downtime n. The period during which a system is error-free and immune from user input.