Update Please disregard this posting. I finally understood the issue (see id:://713852).
caller(1) returns info about f's caller

If this is the case, I would understand why my approach failed. But then I don't understand why in my original program, caller(1) (executed from within _format_caller) delivered 

main,U:\develsv\ARTS\playground\callertest.pl,16,main::f,1,,,,2,UUUUUU
+UUUUU

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That is, it says "the caller is main::f". This is _format_caller's caller, NOT f's caller. Actually that's why I had concluded that counting would start at 1. And indeed, from the command line: 

 perl -lwe 'sub a{print((caller 0)[3])};sub b{a()};sub c{b()}; c'

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gives main::a (that is, caller 0 says "who I am", i.e. which function is invoking caller). 
 perl -lwe 'sub a{print((caller 1)[3])};sub b{a()};sub c{b()}; c'

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gives main::b (that is, caller 1 says who has called me) 
 perl -lwe 'sub a{print((caller 2)[3])};sub b{a()};sub c{b()}; c'

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gives main::c (that is, the caller of main::b), but for 
 perl -lwe 'sub a{print((caller 3)[3])};sub b{a()};sub c{b()}; c'

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I would have expected to get information about the caller of main::c, which is the main program (not the shell), but there is none.

-- 
Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>

In reply to Re^4: caller() mystery by rovf
in thread caller() mystery by rovf

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