Shell.pm is great syntactic sugar. That is, until you need to invoke a command whose name contains characters permissible in shell identifiers but not in Perl identifiers. Examples: repo-add, python2.4, c++, etc...

IMHO, having to do "$cmd"->(@args) is clumsy and defeats the point of using Shell.pm.

In stead, I suggest that when using Shell.pm with explicit imports that would have this problem, the names should be perlified (tr/.-/_/ should do the trick).

Example: 
use Shell 'repo-add';

...

repo_add(@args);

[download]

Here's my proposed patch: 
--- Shell.pm.old    2008-07-08 12:09:00.000000000 -0700
+++ Shell.pm    2008-07-08 14:17:11.000000000 -0700
@@ -21,8 +21,9 @@
         @EXPORT = 'AUTOLOAD';
     }
     foreach my $sym (@EXPORT) {
+        (my $perlsym = $sym) =~ s/[^a-zA-Z0-9_]/_/g;
         no strict 'refs';
-        *{"${callpack}::$sym"} = \&{"Shell::$sym"};
+        *{"${callpack}::$perlsym"} = \&{"Shell::$sym"};
     }
 }

[download]
Does this seem like a good idea? If not, why not?

Update:
Update 2: Realized I broke the autoloading. Fixed.

In reply to Possible Improvement to Shell.pm by plobsing

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