Colon Operator/Seperator

[tomazos]

I was looking through the perldoc for Test::Class and came across something I hadn't seen before...

  package Example::Test;
  use base qw(Test::Class);
  use Test::More;

  sub subtraction : Test {
      is( 2-1, 1, 'subtraction works );
  };

What is that strange colon doing between subtraction and Test - and what is it up to?

Can someone tell me what it is called and which Perl man page documents it?

-Andrew.

[Zaxo]

It marks the start of the attribute list for subtraction. Also see perlsub. Test::Class provides the handler for the Test attribute.

Perl operators and punctuation are context-driven, overlapping, and overloaded to the gills. That's why it's so much fun :-) Just like a human language.

[runrig]

'Test' is an attribute. see perldoc perlsub (update: and attributes and Attribute::Handlers).

[kwaping]

Working link for attributes: http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html