dynamically renaming a package?

perl5ever has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Using GLOBs it is possible to directly manipulate the symbol table for individual entries, e.g.:

sub foo { ... }
...
*foo = sub { ... }; # install new version of sub foo
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Is something similar possible for an entire package, i.e. renaming a package?

package Foo;
sub bar { ... }

package main;

*::NewFoo = *::Foo; # or something like this

NewFoo::bar(); # calls Foo::bar();
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Re: dynamically renaming a package? by almut (Canon) on Feb 03, 2010 at 15:59 UTC
Maybe something like this (it doesn't exactly rename the package, but rather just copies its symbol table hash): `#!/usr/bin/perl package Foo; sub bar { print "bar() called.\n" } package main; BEGIN { %{NewFoo::} = %{Foo::} } NewFoo::bar(); # calls Foo::bar();` [download] or without `BEGIN`, in which case you need to postpone the compilation of `NewFoo::bar()` until runtime using `eval`: `... %{NewFoo::} = %{Foo::}; eval q\|NewFoo::bar()\|; # calls Foo::bar();` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re: dynamically renaming a package?
by almut (Canon) on Feb 03, 2010 at 15:59 UTC

Maybe something like this (it doesn't exactly rename the package, but rather just copies its symbol table hash):

#!/usr/bin/perl

package Foo;
sub bar { print "bar() called.\n" }

package main;

BEGIN { %{*NewFoo::} = %{*Foo::} }

NewFoo::bar();  # calls Foo::bar();
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or without BEGIN, in which case you need to postpone the compilation of NewFoo::bar() until runtime using eval:

...

%{*NewFoo::} = %{*Foo::};

eval q|NewFoo::bar()|;  # calls Foo::bar();
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