http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=527987

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

Is there a way to fully qualify a subroutine with the package name in a variable but without using eval?

This is possible with OO programming, where a long class name can be replaced with a variable:

my $class = 'Very::Long::Class::Name'; $class->method;

I want to do a similar thing for non-OO subroutines, so I can add clarity to the program by fully qualifying the sub name but still keep the call to a manageable length (and without sprinkling eval everywhere). Doing this:

my $pkg = 'Very::Long::Package::Name'; $pkg::sub;
obviously doesn't work, since $pkg::sub refers to the global variable $sub in the pkg namespace.

I've considered the following options (example code below):

use strict; use warnings; { package very::long::packagename; sub foo { print '[', join( '][', @_ ), "]\n"; return "from sub foo\n"; } } { package pkg; our $foo = "foovar\n"; } { package bar; # this refers to $foo in package 'pkg' print $pkg::foo; # foovar # fully qualified sub call very::long::packagename::foo( 'param' ); # [param] # create a ref to a fully qualified sub my $subfoo_ref = \&very::long::packagename::foo; print $subfoo_ref->( 'param' ); # from sub foo $subfoo_ref->( 'param' ); # [param] # call the sub as a method my $pkg = 'very::long::packagename'; $pkg->foo( 'param' ); # [very::long::packagename][param] # stringify the call, use eval my $func_str = $pkg . "::foo( 'param' );"; eval $func_str; # [param] }

Are there other ways of doing this that are not listed above? Comments regarding best practices are also appreciated.

Thanks!