7.6. Writing a Subroutine That Takes Filehandles as Built-ins Do7.6.1. ProblemYou can pass a bareword filehandle to Perl functions like eof, and you'd like to write similar subroutines of your own. 7.6.2. SolutionUse the Symbol module's qualify_to_ref in conjunction with a * prototype on the subroutine: use Symbol qw(qualify_to_ref); sub my_eof (*) { my $handle = shift; $handle = qualify_to_ref($handle, caller( )); # use $handle } 7.6.3. DiscussionThe * prototype tells Perl that the function expects a bareword filehandle as its argument. This lets you call the function like so: my_eof(HANDLE); This works even when use strict 'subs' is in effect. The function receives a string as its argument, though. To safely use the argument as a filehandle, you need the Symbol module to turn it into a reference to a typeglob. And since typeglob refs can be used wherever you'd use named filehandles, store that reference in a scalar variable and use the variable as an indirect filehandle within your subroutine. If you pass in a filehandle that is already a reference to a typeglob, like those autovivified by open, Perl and qualify_to_ref still do the right thing: open(my $fh, "<", $filename) or die; my_eof($fh); This technique is used in Recipe 7.23. 7.6.4. See AlsoThe documentation for the standard module Symbol (also in Chapter 32 of Programming Perl); the "Prototypes" section in the perlsub(1) manpage (also in Chapter 6 of Programming Perl); Recipe 7.23 Copyright © 2003 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved. |
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