in reply to Re^4: Trying to DESTROY() an object
in thread SOLVED: Trying to DESTROY() a (closure-wrapped) object

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; }
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.
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
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;
I get
foo baz destroying... foo
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; }
which, for your code, outputs
foo destroying... bless({}, "Count") 1 baz baz
and for mine
foo baz destroying... bless({ sub => sub { ... }, x => "x" }, "Count") 1 foo

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}; }
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.

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Re^6: Trying to DESTROY() an object
by Eily (Monsignor) on Dec 09, 2015 at 19:18 UTC

    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 :)