package Foo;

sub new { bless {}, shift };
sub method { shift; return shift() + shift() }

package main;

my $foo = Foo->new;
my $method = "method";
my @args = ( 2, 3 );
print $foo->$method( @args );
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Or am I missing something?

Yes, right! Thank you.

atemerev

I'm away from a perl interpreter right now so this little snippet (from the the Perl Cookbook, recipe 11.4) will just have to do:

my %commands = (
    "happy" => \&joy,
    "sad"   => \&sullen,
    "done"  => sub { die "See ya!" },
    "mad"   => \&angry,
);

print "How are you? ";
chomp($string = <STDIN>);
if ($commands{$string}) {
    $commands{$string}->();
} else {
    print "No such command: $string\n";
}
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The idea here is to store your function/method references in a hash (%commands). Then you call the method by looking it up in the hash, and passing in the params. I don't remember the exact context for this, but, most of the time when you're using eval'd strings or "soft references" you can use a hash to achieve the same results.

Good luck with it!

Kurt

That's definitely a useful technique, but beware that these aren't methods: they don't go through method dispatch at all. You don't get polymorphism this way, unless you use a double-dispatch scheme.

If you wanted to make sure the method exists you could trap errors with the other form of eval (called "try" in other languages):

my $rv;
if (!eval { $rv = $doomsday_weapon->$method(@args); 1 }) {
   die("Doomsday weapon failed: $@\n");
}
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Or you could use can:

my $method_ref = $doomsday_weapon->can($method)
   or die("Method $method not supported by this doomsday weapon\n");

$method(@args); 1 }) {
   die("Doomsday weapon failed: $@\n");
}

my $rv = $doomsday_weapon->$method_ref(@args);
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