Whitehawke has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: 

      no strict 'refs'; 
      my $method = "$package::rewrite_$2"; 
      $_ = &$method($self, $1) . "\n";

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Just curious...am I going to burn for this?

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Re: Am I evil for doing this?
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 10, 2005 at 21:40 UTC
    Yes. But there's a better way to sin — assuming that $self has $package in its hereditary tree: 
    
use strict;

my $method = "rewrite_$2";

$_ = $self->$method($1) . "\n";

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      jdporter suggested:


use strict; 
my $method = "rewrite_$2"; 
$_ = $self->$method($1) . "\n";

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      Actually, that seems slightly LESS evil to me...you are calling a method as a method, allowing Perl to Do The Right Thing in terms of argument passing and inheritance. I'm calling a method as a sub, and tricking it into working by explicitly passing the $self ref. Which means, of course, that your version is better code...just not better evil. :>
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        Actually, that seems slightly LESS evil to me

        It's so much less evil, in fact, that it's actually allowed by strict. That should say a lot. Frankly, I think jdporter's method isn't evil at all. If you wanted to be extra careful, you could use UNIVERSAL::can to make sure the method exists before trying to call it:

        use strict;
my $method = "rewrite_$2";

if ($self->can($method)) {
    $self->$method($1);
} else {
    warn "$self does not have $method";
}

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        Update: ihb++, I agree fully with Re^5: Am I evil for doing this?

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