Re: Why are subs matching /^[\W_]$/ global?

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 13:13, Abigail <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 02, 2010 at 12:46:44PM +0000, Ęvar Arnfjörš Bjarmason wrote:
>> Single-character non-alpha (plus _) subroutines are global
>>
>>     $ perl -le '** = sub {warn "Hi"}; package Foo; &*'
>>     Hi at -e line 1.
>>
>>     $ perl -le '*a = sub {warn "Hi"}; package Foo; &a'
>>     Undefined subroutine &Foo::a called at -e line 1.
>>
>> and:
>>
>>     $ perl -le '*_ = sub {warn "Hi"}; package Foo; &_'
>>     Hi at -e line 1.
>>
>>     $ perl -le '*__ = sub {warn "Hi"}; package Foo; &__'
>>     Undefined subroutine &Foo::__ called at -e line 1
>>
>> This came up when I was looking at _() in Perl as a potential Gettext
>> wrapper (I know about the _ filehandle).
>>
>> _ I think I can understand (presumably the _ glob is global). But why
>> does this apply generally to all /^[\W_]$/ subs? Is it explicitly
>> documented somewhere? Perhaps it's something we'd want to deprecate?
>>
>
>
> Documented. From perlvar:
>
>       Perl identifiers that begin with digits, control characters, or
>       punctuation characters are exempt from the effects of the "package"
>       declaration and are always forced to be in package "main"; they are
>       also exempt from "strict 'vars'" errors.  A few other names are also
>       exempt in these ways:
>
>               ENV             STDIN
>               INC             STDOUT
>               ARGV            STDERR
>               ARGVOUT         _
>               SIG
>
>       In particular, the new special "${^_XYZ}" variables are always taken to
>       be in package "main", regardless of any "package" declarations
>       presently in scope.
>
>
> Note also that perlvar claims all such names are reserved for special uses
> by Perl. From the same manual page:

Thanks. I was looking in perlsub and friends.

>       Perl variable names may also be a sequence of digits or a single
>       punctuation or control character.  These names are all reserved for
>       special uses by Perl; for example, the all-digits names are used to
>       hold data captured by backreferences after a regular expression match.
>       Perl has a special syntax for the single-control-character names: It
>       understands "^X" (caret "X") to mean the control-"X" character.  For
>       example, the notation $^W (dollar-sign caret "W") is the scalar
>       variable whose name is the single character control-"W".  This is
>       better than typing a literal control-"W" into your program.
>
>
> Basically, it comes down to, "if it global, you can't have it anyway".

Right, but if it's reserved by perl, perhaps we should warn and
eventually prohibit uses of these constructs. As-is you can define and
use a sub called *, even though it's reserved.