Re: How to change referent of lexical reference?

You can modify any arguments (references or ordinary scalars) passed to a sub by editing them inplace in @_ (as opposed to making a copy with shift inside the sub). I can't tell from your description if this is possible in your case, but it's a thought:

my $foo = \"foo";
my $bar = \"bar";
 
print "$$foo\n";
change_ref($foo);
print "$$foo\n";
 
sub change_ref {
    $_[0] = $bar;
}

__OUTPUT__
foo
bar
[download]

I would assume there's a corresponding way to do it in XS too, but I'm not the one to ask about that.

blokhead

Comment on Re: How to change referent of lexical reference? Download Code

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Re: Re: How to change referent of lexical reference? by autarch (Hermit) on Sep 21, 2003 at 20:58 UTC
Hmm, I just tried that but it didn't work. The STORABLE_thaw() method gets called from Storable's XS code, which may explain the problem. I think that Storable calls STORABLE_thaw with a blessed reference of the appropriate type (in my case a hash ref) and then looks directly at the _referenced_ data after calling the method, as opposed to looking at the reference itself. So I need a way to switch the referent out from under the reference.	[reply]

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Re: Re: How to change referent of lexical reference?
by autarch (Hermit) on Sep 21, 2003 at 20:58 UTC

I think that Storable calls STORABLE_thaw with a blessed reference of the appropriate type (in my case a hash ref) and then looks directly at the _referenced_ data after calling the method, as opposed to looking at the reference itself.

So I need a way to switch the referent out from under the reference.

[reply]