Tying package-variable hashes

premchai21 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Suppose I have a module that ties hashes, say Tie::Hash::Xyzzy. Now I do this:

package main; # (not necessarily explicit)
tie %::, 'Tie::Hash::Xyzzy';
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I've verified that when this is done, TIEHASH and DESTROY both get called at the right times, but I cannot figure out how and/or whether it is possible to actually use the package-variable hash as tied (I can't figure out how to tiewise-invoke STORE, FETCH, etc.) and what effect this would have (Tying to the object access to all variables in the package?) -- anymonk know how exactly this works?

Comment on Tying package-variable hashes Download Code

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Re: Tying package-variable hashes by japhy (Canon) on Nov 10, 2001 at 00:48 UTC
Well, Perl doesn't use Perl's data structures for working with the symbol table, it uses perl's. It doesn't convert things like `$foo = 1` into `${ $main::{foo} } = 1`, because that'd be too damn slow. So I'm afraid you can't really do what you're trying to do, unless you `tie()` EVERY variable you make into a special monitoring class. _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker. `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply]
Re: Re: Tying package-variable hashes by premchai21 (Curate) on Nov 10, 2001 at 01:43 UTC
Oh, I'm not trying to do anything in particular. I was just wondering whether there was a particular way this worked, and/or a particular reason for it working that way. Your post does however provide some insight. Thank you.	[reply]