variable sub function?

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

This may just be a pipe dream... I've created an array of Win32::Comboboxes, and I want to have "one sub function to rule them all..." (heh heh... couldn't resist). Basically, this is what I'm talking about...

foreach my $row (1..222){
    foreach my $col (1..5){
        if ($col =~ '1' && $account !~ $Sheet->Cells($row,$col)->{'Val
+ue'}){
            $account = $Sheet->Cells($row,$col)->{'Value'};
            @labels[$count] = $main->AddLabel(
                -text     => $account,
                -top    => $top,
                -left    => $left
            );
            $top += 15;

            @comboboxes[$count] = $main->AddCombobox(
                -name       => $account."ComboBox",
                    -top        => $top,
                    -left       => $left,
                    -width       => 125,
                    -height      => 150,
                    -tabstop     => 1,
                    -style         => WS_VISIBLE | 3 | WS_VSCROLL
            );
            $count += 1;
            $top += 25;
        }
        else {
            if ($col =~ '2'){
                $value = $Sheet->Cells($row,$col)->{'Value'};
                @comboboxes[$count-1]->InsertItem($value);
            }
        }     
    }
}
[download]

and I want to have a sub function for the change of ANY of the comboboxes.... something like...


sub @comboboxes_Change{
    print "You changed somethin'.\n";
}
[download]

That doesn't work, obviously. If I hard code in a sub function with something that I KNOW will be valid, like "ACCOUNTNAMEComboBox_Change", then it works fine. Any thoughts? Josh Pavel

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Re: variable sub function? by chromatic (Archbishop) on May 30, 2002 at 14:40 UTC
A general rule of programming: if you want to store a number of distinct things, use an aggregate data type. A general rule of Perl programming: if you want to store several things and access them by name, use a hash. Use a hash of subroutine references. (As side notes, matching equality of a simple integer with a regular expression is, at best over kill. Assigning a single element to a list slice is, until Perl 6, deprecated. Incrementing $count to add elements to an array is usually better spelled push.) Update: Okay, my analysis ignores the realities of Win32::GUI. Disturbing.	[reply]
Re: Re: variable sub function? by c-era (Curate) on May 30, 2002 at 14:54 UTC
The problem here is that he is using Win32::GUI components. Win32::GUI has some strangaties. If you want to catch events, you need a sub for each event on each object. For example if you have an object named x and want to catch a change event, you will need to have a sub called x_Change. If you create another object called y, you will now need to create a sub called y_Change to catch change events for y. Unlike most GUI implementations, you can't register a sub for an event, the sub names are hard coded for each object. This was one of the many reasons I stopped using Win32::GUI.	[reply]
Re: variable sub function? by c-era (Curate) on May 30, 2002 at 14:26 UTC
You could probably use typeglobs. Here is an example: `sub mySub { print "this sub\n"; } mySub2 = \&mySub; mySub2();` [download] And just repeat '`mySub2 = \&mySub`' for each sub you need to setup (changing the name of mySub2). If you want to learn more about typeglobs, I recomend Advanced perl programming (there are a lot of other goodies in there as well).	[reply] [d/l] [select]