Wrong behavior of the implicit smart operator in the given/when blocks

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

I have the following code:

use 5.010;

my %hash = (a => 1);

given(\%hash){           # first true
#given('a'){             # all true
    when('a' ~~ $_){
        say "explicit ~~";
        continue;
    }
    when($_ ~~ 'a'){
        say "reversed explicit ~~";
        continue;
    }
    when('a'){
        say "implicit ~~";
    }
}
[download]

It is known that 'key' ~~ \%hash returns true if 'key' exists in %hash.

From the above code, when('a'){...} should return true because the key 'a' exists in %hash.

I see this as a perl bug. - Please correct me if I'm wrong.

My solution is when('a'){...} to be equivalent with when('a' ~~ $_){...}.
(In perl v5.14.2, it is equivalent with when($_ ~~ 'a'){...} - which in this case is wrong

Comment on Wrong behavior of the implicit smart operator in the given/when blocks Select or Download Code

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Re: Wrong behavior of the implicit smart operator in the given/when blocks by ikegami (Patriarch) on Apr 30, 2012 at 15:42 UTC
The docs say: `when($foo)` [download] is exactly equivalent to `when($_ ~~ $foo)` [download] Not `when ($foo ~~ $_)`. The value passed to `given` is the thing being checked. In your example, the first case matches because your string matches your hash, but the next two fail because your hash doesn't match your string.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Wrong behavior of the implicit smart operator in the given/when blocks by educated_foo (Vicar) on Apr 30, 2012 at 15:35 UTC
Smart match and given/when are horribly complex and confusing (see "Smart matching in detail" in perlsyn), with the semantics changing between versions. AFAICT they may even change again in some future Perl, as many people on perl5-porters think they're broken. I'd just stick to "exists $hash{a}", which is not much more to type, and works.	[reply]
Re^2: Wrong behavior of the implicit smart operator in the given/when blocks by ikegami (Patriarch) on Apr 30, 2012 at 15:45 UTC
Specifically, they think the interface is some combination of too confusing, too complex, too error prone. Smart::Match is seen as way better interface.	[reply]
Re^3: Wrong behavior of the implicit smart operator in the given/when blocks by tobyink (Canon) on Apr 30, 2012 at 16:40 UTC
As I understand it, it's DOY's smartmatch which is the possible candidate for future Perls. This pushes the behaviour of smart match out to modules (on a lexically scoped basis). So you can: `use smartmatch 'acme';` [download] And then the `~~` operator will start acting along the lines of whatever's defined in the `smartmatch::engine::acme` module. Perl will then come bundled with a backwards compatible behaviour (modelled on 5.14 most probably) and a simplified one. Personally, I tend to follow the rule of keeping the left hand side of the smart match as either a non-reference scalar or a blessed object. If you stick to that, then whatever you put on the right hand side, smart match generally behaves pretty sanely and intuitively. (With the possible exception of when you've got hashref on the right hand side - I'm not sure there's any completely intuitive behaviour in that case, but the current behaviour certainly seems no worse than anything else.) `perl -E'sub Monkey::do{say$_,for@_,do{($monkey=[caller(0)]->[3])=~s{::}{ }and$monkey}}"Monkey say"->Monkey::do'`	[reply] [d/l] [select]