Dear Perl Monks,

I have several modules that use large tables to generate code and other tables, etc. Usually, these tables look like this: 

use constant SOME_TABLE => {
  &SOMECONSTANT => [
     &ANOTHER1 => sub { ... },
     &CONST2   => sub { ... },
  ],
  .......
};

[download]
These can go several levels deep. The problem I've run into is that I like the arrow notation, as it makes the tables easy and intuitive to read. However, since I use constants and left side of the arrow is placed in quotes, I have to call the constant explicitly, using ampersand.

The problem with this is that if such constant is undefined (due to a type-o, for instance), this error will not get caught until run-time. It would be neat to catch these bastards at compile-time, but then I have to lose the arrow and use a comma instead.

Question: is there a way to catch undefined subroutines at compile-time and keep using the arrow notation at the same time?

In reply to Constants and arrow notation. by dmitri

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