Restoring the magic to the _ filehandle in Perl 5.8.9

[clinton]

Hi all

I'm using sub _() as a means to localise text, eg:

    # set current lang to spanish
    print _('Hello!');
    > ¡Hola!

The sub looks like this:

        *::_ = sub {
            return \*_ unless @_;  # to handle eg -e _ 
            $Burro::i18n::Current_Lang->maketext( map {$_} @_ );
        };

The second line of the sub is to handle uses of the special filehandle _ in (eg):

     stat 'foo' && -e _ && -r _;

However, perl 5.8.9 has added this warning: Use of -l on filehandle _. So while the other -X functions can handle a glob reference to the special filehandle, -l can't.

The code below, in Perl 5.8.8 and 5.10.9 prints 1\n three times, meaning that it works correctly. However, in 5.8.9, you get the failures listed in the comments.

   use strict;
   use warnings;

   open my $fh,'>','foo' or die $!;
   print $fh 'foo';
   close $fh or die $!;
   
   symlink 'foo','bar';         # ln -s foo bar

   BEGIN {
       *::_ = sub {
            return \*_ unless @_; 
       };
   }
   

   { 
    no warnings;   
    print lstat 'bar' && -l _;   # '' (incorrect)
    print "\n";
   }

   print lstat 'bar' && -l _;   # Use of -l on filehandle _
   print "\n";

   local *_;
   print lstat 'bar' && -l _;   # Undefined subroutine &main::_ 
   print "\n";

If I remove the BEGIN block, then both the -l _ and my _() sub work correctly. Similarly, if I load any modules that use -l _ before defining the _() sub, then everything works correctly. However, this is a fragile way of working around the problem - I'd have check any modules that I use for use of lstat.

Is there any way that I can restore the magic to _?