On Mar 8, 2009, at 11:48 AM, Ovid wrote:
I want to write a module which allows me to quickly detect if a
method is overriding a parent class method (I already know about the
method cache invalidation problem).
Potential uses would be for something like this:
use Attribute::Override;
use parent 'Some::Class';
sub foo :override{...} # fails if it doesn't override
sub bar {...} # fails if it does override
Or:
# needs to
use Method::Override;
Method::Override::overriden(qw/foo/); # must be done after
compilation
That can solve nasty problems where the developer accidentally
overrides a parent method but doesn't realize it. Still trying to
figure out a "good" interface, otherwise it will never get used
(unless it's built in to the language, I suspect it will never get
used anyway, but what the heck :)
Suggestions?
In Java, it's
@Override
public void foo() { ... }
which is very close to what you've suggested with :override. It is
indeed quite useful because it checks both method name and signature.
But for backward compatibility, it does not fail if it doesn't
override, so there are third-party static analyzers (e.g. FindBugs)
which take on that chore if you mark a superclass method as
@MustOverride or something like that. That's sometimes done for
clone() or the like.
Chris
