I'm slowly updating one of my larger CPAN modules and came across some code that hacks the symtab to create methods. It works great and is easy to read, but I'm curious if there's a way to do it without needing to utilize the no strict 'refs'.

The original code is designed so that several classes can access their own settings in a config file by using $obj->CONFIG_DIRECTIVE() without having to do $obj->{config}{directive}.

Here's a very basic example without the complexity of the class hierarchy, multi-level hash or config file.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

my @constants = qw(ONE TWO);

for my $member (@constants){
    no strict 'refs';
    
    my $thing;

    *{$member} = sub {
        $thing = shift if @_;
        return $thing;
    }
}

ONE("1: one\n");
TWO(2);

print ONE(), TWO() ."\n";

[download]

At the time a few years ago, I must not have found a different way to do this which is why I implemented it in this manner, but am wondering what other Monks think.

Thanks,

-stevieb

In reply to Creating sub from string without munging the symbol table by stevieb

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.