Hi all, I recently found out that perl allows subroutines to be lvalues. Which strikes me as very weird. So what can you use this feature for? One use that I came up with is as a callback-modified error routine: 

sub error :lvalue 
{
    $error_string;
}

error() = "This is error 1\n";

while(1)
{
    print error(), "\n";
    # Code somewhere else assigns a new value
    # to error() (perhaps in a callback?)
    # The next time error is called, it prints
    # a different value.
}

[download]
So what other uses are out there? What can be achieved with an lvalue subroutine that can't be achieved with a variable? Admittedly, TMTOWTDI...

In reply to Uses for an lvalue subroutine by bent

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.