Dear Monks,

I want to know why the symbolic reference in the following code does not generate an error when using strict:

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

sub greet {
    say 'hello';
}

sub test {
    goto &{"greet"}; #SYMBOLIC REFERENCE
}

test();

--output:--
hello

[download]

In the following line of code, "greet" is a string:

goto &{"greet"};

[download]

and it looks like the string is being dereferenced into a sub--yet strict 'refs' is in effect.

The above is a simplified version of the following code:

{package Dog;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    bless {Name=>'Spot', Color=>"black"}, $class;
}

#For auto generating the getters:

sub AUTOLOAD {
    my $self = shift;
    our $AUTOLOAD;
    
    my %methods = (
        color    => undef,
        name     => undef,
    );

    if ($AUTOLOAD =~ /::(\w+)\z/ 
        and 
        exists $methods{$1} ) {
    
        my $data_name = ucfirst $1;
        
        {
            no strict 'refs';
            *{$AUTOLOAD} = sub  { $self->{$data_name} };
        }
        
        goto &{$AUTOLOAD};
    }
    else {
        use Carp;
        croak "No method named $AUTOLOAD";
    }
        
}

}

my $dog = Dog->new;
say $dog->name;
say $dog->color;

[download]

In reply to symbolic references by 7stud

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.