Greetings Monks!

This question is probably more trouble than it's worth, but it's been bugging me, so here goes:

I can create constants like so:

use constant { FOO => 1, BAR => 2 };
[download]

but if I want a way to convert the number back into a string, I need to do something that defines the same relationships again, like

my @num_to_name = qw(FOO BAR);
[download]

which allows me to do things like:

my $thing = FOO;
print "Thing = ".$num_to_name[$thing]."\n";
[download]

My problem is, I hate that I have to maintain my constant declarations and my @num_to_name list separately. If I was doing this with a large number of constants, I'd screw it up for sure.

I actually made a thing that sort of does what I want, though It's cludge-tastic and probably all wrong and unnecessarily stupid:

my @num_to_name;
BEGIN {
    @num_to_name = qw(FOO BAR);
    for my $number ( 0 .. $#things) {
        *blah = eval "*My::Package::".$things[$number];
        *blah = sub { $number };
    }
}
[download]

With that monster, $num_to_name[FOO] eq 'FOO' no matter what. It loses the inlining of use constant, which is part of what's lame about it.

Is there a way to do this that sucks less?

Thank you for your indulgence

--Pileofrogs

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.