Hello kennethk, You'll have to post a full code for that last output, because I have read your post more than five times and still don't understand the difference between weakening $self or weakening a copy of it.

Because $self immediately goes out of scope.

use warnings;
no warnings 'redefine';
use strict;

use lib '.';
use Count;

print One::foo();
{
    my $bar = Count->mock;
    print One::foo();
}
print One::foo();
[download]

package One;

sub foo {
    return "foo\n";
}
1;

package Count;

use Scalar::Util qw/weaken/; 

sub new {
    return bless {}, shift;
}
sub unmock {
    my $self = shift;
    *One::foo = \&{ $self->{sub} };
}
sub mock {
    my $thing = shift;
    my $self;

    if (ref($thing) eq __PACKAGE__){
        $self = $thing;
    }
    else {
        $self = bless {}, __PACKAGE__;
    }
    
    weaken $self;
    $self->{sub} = \&One::foo;
    *One::foo = sub { $self->{x} = 'x'; return "baz\n"; };
    return $self;
}
sub DESTROY {
    my $self = shift;
    print "destroying...\n";
    $self->unmock;
}
1;
[download]

use warnings;
use strict;

use lib '.';
#use Count;

print One::foo();
{
    #my $count = Count->new;
    my $bar = Count->mock;
    print One::foo();
}
print One::foo();

BEGIN{
package One;

sub foo {
    return "foo\n";
}
1;

package Count;

sub new {
    return bless {}, shift;
}
sub unmock {
    my $self = shift;
    *One::foo = \&{ $self->{sub} };
}
sub mock {
    my $thing = shift;
    my $self;

    if (ref($thing) eq __PACKAGE__){
        $self = $thing;
    }
    else {
        $self = bless {}, __PACKAGE__;
    }
    use Scalar::Util 'weaken';
    weaken $self;

    $self->{sub} = \&One::foo;
    {
        no warnings 'redefine';
        *One::foo = sub { $self->{x} = 'x'; return "baz\n"; };
    }
    return $self;
}
sub DESTROY {
    my $self = shift;
    print "destroying...\n";
    $self->unmock;
}
1;

}
[download]

outputs

foo
Use of uninitialized value in subroutine dereference at script.pl line
+ 30.
destroying...
baz
baz
    (in cleanup) Unable to create sub named "" at script.pl line 30.
[download]

If you weaken $self then you immediately lower the reference count to 0. If you copy $self to $closure_self then you raise the count to 2, then lower it to 1. $self does not go out of scope until after the return, at which point you've passed an external reference to your main block and thus still have a ref count of 1.

I ran your posted code under ActiveState 5.20, and got the output

foo
destroying...
baz
baz
[download]

and if I swap the chunk in question to

    my $closure_self = $self;
    weaken $closure_self;
    $self->{sub} = \&One::foo;
    *One::foo = sub { $closure_self->{x} = 'x'; return "baz\n"; };
    return $self;
[download]

I get

foo
baz
destroying...
foo
[download]

Your code cannot restore the old function, because your object was out of scope before your assignment. This could be demonstrated by using Data::Dump in DESTROY:

sub DESTROY {
    use Data::Dump;
    my $self = shift;
    print "destroying...\n";
    print dd($self), "\n";
    $self->unmock;
}
[download]

which, for your code, outputs

foo
destroying...
bless({}, "Count")
1
baz
baz
[download]

and for mine

foo
baz
destroying...
bless({ sub => sub { ... }, x => "x" }, "Count")
1
foo
[download]

You will also note you'll start getting the errors and warnings I posted if you put strict and warnings in your modules instead of just in your script.

This all raises the point that unmock is actually written terribly, because it creates a whole additional closure about $self. It should really be

sub unmock {
    my $self = shift;
    *One::foo = $self->{sub};
}
[download]

so that you restore the original sub reference.

---

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

Oh right! I saw the strict and warnings on the first file, I did not even check if they were there on the second when I copy/pasted. Now I do understand the use of the copied reference. Thanks for taking the time to answer :)

Thanks kennethk.

I also found that instead of doing the object redirect, I can weaken() inside of the sub re-definition on $self directly:

*$sub = sub {
    weaken $self if ! isweak $self;
    ...
}
[download]

I've been doing some testing with both scenarios to see if without the $closure_self, weird issues crop up.

I don't think that does what you want. The reference will never be weakened if you never call sub.
Read more... (1356 Bytes)

---

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

That's good... and it's for certain what I don't want. Having a sub doing random stuff after one thinks the object is out of scope could lead to spectacularly hard to find bugs ;)