Re^2: Creating a global function

[broquaint]

You're on the right track

use Carp 'croak';
sub UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD {
  my($m) = $UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD =~ /::(\w+)$/;

  croak "Undefined subroutine &$UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD called"
    unless $m eq 'global';

  print "this sub really is global\n";
}

global();

{
  package foo;
  global();
}

__output__

this sub really is global
this sub really is global

Although there's the obvious caveat that the global behaviour is no longer honoured if the current package already implements AUTOLOAD and doesn't delegate to UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD upon failure. That and it's fairly hideous. I'd personally opt for defining a subroutine in main then just calling it the lazy way e.g

sub main::global {
  print "this isn't quite global\n";
}

::global();
{
  package foo;
  ::global();
}

__output__

this isn't quite global
this isn't quite global

[ambrus]

I've read somewhere that although AUTOLOAD is currently always searched through the inheritance tree, in future perl versions this will happen only when you are AUTOLOADing a method call, not a simple function call. Thus, this solution may not work in future versions. Am I right here?