Re^8: Ter::ANSIColor is awesome, but.. (need help)

[mascip]

Oh yes, I just need a very thin wrapper. I should stop working on the weekend: I'm too tired to think. I imagined I'd have to refactor Term::ANSIColor into a class.

It could look like this instead (more generic):

package String::Colored;

sub new { 
    my( $class, $string, $color )= @_;

    bless { string => $string, color => $color } => $class;
};

sub stringify {
    my( $self )= @_;
    colored( $self->{ name }, $self->{$color} );
}

sub eq {
    ...
}

I like the idea.

But I read your advice and now I'm wondering.
Do you think you could give me the simplest example of how I might encounter unintentional stringification?

I'm heading back home, I'll think about this tonight.

[Corion]

If you are using $name as the key for a hash, it will get stringified.

If you use @foo eq @bar to do a quick check whether two arrays (roughly) contain the same elements, the stringified elements will be compared.

[mascip]

Haha, dammit!

So... what I want is to always stringify my String::Colored object as a colorless string... unless when it's being printed on the screen.

Is there any way to know that a text is being displayed on the screen? There's no "printing on screen" operator unfortunately ;-)

print() indicates that we're in string context, which forces the stringification. So nothing will help my object know whether it's being printed or used as a hash key.

That's annoying... I'll keep it in mind, in case I come up with a workaround. Otherwise I'll have to either abandon colors, think about re-organizing my code, or write colored() everywhere. I've got time to think...

If only there was a "printing on screen" context...
Or is that a silly idea?

Thanks a lot for your help Corion :-)

[Anonymous Monk]

Well, if overloading stringification calls a function (method, whatever), caller will return name/file/line of who is calling .... so yeah, caller tells you what file on what line, and you can peek at the source to see if its a call to print .... hopefully that rings some alarms for you :)