Change to package name handling in Perl 5.18?

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

Try this on an old version of Perl (before 5.17) and a newer one (5.18 or above):

perl -MHTTP::Tiny -e'my $class = q(::HTTP::Tiny); $class->new'
[download]

Was this change documented anywhere?

Comment on Change to package name handling in Perl 5.18? Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Change to package name handling in Perl 5.18? by haukex (Archbishop) on Sep 15, 2020 at 20:30 UTC
./Porting/bisect.pl --target=miniperl --start=v5.16.3 --end=v5.18.0 --expect-fail -e 'sub foo::new {} "::foo"->new' ... commit 7156e69abfd37267e85105c6ec0c449ce4e41523 Author: Father Chrysostomos <sprout@cpan.org> Date: Thu Sep 20 08:56:38 2012 -0700 [perl #105922] Allow any string before ->meth The rules for filtering out what do not look like package names are not logical and disallow valid things like "::main", while allowing q"_#@$!@^(". This commit simply lets any non-empty string be used as a package name. If it is a typo, you’ll get an error anyway. This allows autobox-style calls like "3foo"->CORE::uc, or even "3foo"->uc if you set up @ISA first. I made an exception for the empty string because it messes up caches somehow and causes subsequent method calls all to be called on the main package. I haven’t looked into that yet. I don’t know whether it’s worth it. The changes to the tests in cpan/Test-Simple have been submit- ted upstream. Mentioned in perl5180delta: Class method calls are now allowed on any string, and not just strings beginning with an alphanumeric character. [perl #105922]	[reply]
Re^2: Change to package name handling in Perl 5.18? by tobyink (Canon) on Sep 15, 2020 at 22:27 UTC
Ah. I should have been searching for "class" instead of "package". Thanks. toby döt ink	[reply]


laziness, impatience, and hubris
	PerlMonks