in reply to Creating a global function

I think what you are after is the UNIVERSAL:: name space, not CORE::GLOBAL. CORE::GLOBAL is used to override built-ins if I remember correctly.

Update: PodMaster is perfectly correct in that UNIVERSAL does not get exported into every name space. I was just suggesting that functions could be made available (via inheritance) to all packages, with UNIVERSAL.

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Re^2: Creating a global function
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Sep 06, 2004 at 15:45 UTC
    No. Every class isa UNIVERSAL, but declaring a sub in the UNVERSAL namespace doesn't export it into every namespace.

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Re^2: Creating a global function
by broquaint (Abbot) on Sep 07, 2004 at 04:51 UTC
    You're on the right track 
    use Carp 'croak';
sub UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD {
  my($m) = $UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD =~ /::(\w+)$/;

  croak "Undefined subroutine &$UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD called"
    unless $m eq 'global';

  print "this sub really is global\n";
}

global();

{
  package foo;
  global();
}

__output__

this sub really is global
this sub really is global

    [download]
    Although there's the obvious caveat that the global behaviour is no longer honoured if the current package already implements AUTOLOAD and doesn't delegate to UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD upon failure. That and it's fairly hideous. I'd personally opt for defining a subroutine in main then just calling it the lazy way e.g 
    sub main::global {
  print "this isn't quite global\n";
}

::global();
{
  package foo;
  ::global();
}

__output__

this isn't quite global
this isn't quite global

    [download]
    HTH

    _________
    broquaint

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      I've read somewhere that although AUTOLOAD is currently always searched through the inheritance tree, in future perl versions this will happen only when you are AUTOLOADing a method call, not a simple function call. Thus, this solution may not work in future versions. Am I right here?

[reply]

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