On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 02:09:49AM -0700, Bustamam Harun wrote:
> Is there anyway I could override how Perl resolve symbols, like for
> instance:
>
> use mypackage;
>
> $obj = new AnyObj();
>
> where AnyObj type is not defined, but in XS I want to check the type
> database (UNO) and see if the type exists and create the new object type
> dynamically. Right now it will give compile error.
Richard Clamp and I did some research. This looks like a job for
UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD. However, the obvious approach failed:
$ perl -e 'sub UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD {warn $UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD}; $obj = AnyObj->new();'
gives
Can't locate object method "new" via package "AnyObj" (perhaps you forgot to load
"AnyObj"?) at -e line 1.
(rather than the warning). However Richard found that if you create
a dummy package first it does work:
$ perl -e 'package AnyObj; package main; sub UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD {warn
$UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD}; $obj = AnyObj->new();'
AnyObj::new at -e line 1.
So if you can query UNO at BEGIN time and add dummy packages for everything
you need, then this looks like a solution.
Otherwise, not sure.
It could be argued that the need for a dummy package is a bug in perl.
I don't know - UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD is not my strong point.
Nicholas Clark
