I've been thinking alot about your post the past few days. It strikes me as a really cool idea, but some things about your solution bother me...

...mainly, I feel like you aren't really AUTOLOADing anything. Your import method is using eval to dynamicly create the method -- at that point it exists, and the AUTOLOAD isn't needed. (unless you add some direct calls to Games::Dice->foo, but even then: the eval called by your AUTOLOAD is dynamicly creating the method, after the first invokation, your AUTOLOAD won't be used.

I tweaked your code some (see below), mainly to replace the eval in the AUTOLOAD with a call out to a new "roll" method, and the eval in your import with some direct symbol table munging.

The problem is, This still isn't "importind autoloaded functions" ... anything a client tries to import, is acctually created at import time.

Can anybody out there think of a way to genuinely create an entry the symbol table for a package that points to "AUTOLOAD" ?

(PS: I changed the name from "Games::Dice" to "Smonk" to protect the innocent.) 

#!/usr/bin/perl

package main;
use Smonk ( 'r3d6' );
use strict;
use warnings;

my %rolls;
for (1..100) {
    my $roll = r3d6; 
    $rolls{$roll}++;
}
for (1..100) {
    my $roll = Smonk->r3d6; 
    $rolls{$roll}++;
}

for (sort {$a<=>$b} keys %rolls) {
    print "$_ => $rolls{$_}\n";
}
 
##### Smonk.pm ###########################
package Smonk;

use warnings;
use strict;
use vars qw($AUTOLOAD @ISA @EXPORT_OK);
@ISA = qw(Exporter);

sub roll {
    my ($rolls, $di) = @_;
    my $result = $rolls;
    for( my $i = 0; $i < $rolls; $i++ ) {
    $result += int(rand($di));
    }
    return $result;
}

sub AUTOLOAD {
    my $self = shift;
    if ( $AUTOLOAD =~ /^.*::r(\d+)[Dd](\d+)/ ) {
    return roll($1, $2);
    }
}

sub import {
    no strict 'refs';
    my $pkg = shift;
    for my $dice (@_) {
    if ($dice =~ /r(\d+)[Dd](\d+)/) {
        my $meth = \sub { roll($1, $2); };
        *{$pkg . '::' . $dice} = $meth;
    }
    }
    @EXPORT_OK = @_;
    Smonk->export_to_level(1, $pkg, @_);
}
1;

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In reply to Re: Perlish dice for gamers (oh, and importing autoloaded functions) by hossman
in thread Perlish dice for gamers (oh, and importing autoloaded functions) by Solo

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