NAME

constant::lexical - Perl pragma to declare lexical compile-time constants

VERSION

2.0003

SYNOPSIS

  use constant::lexical DEBUG => 0;
  {
          use constant::lexical PI => 4 * atan2 1, 1;
          use constant::lexical DEBUG => 1;

          print "Pi equals ", PI, "...\n" if DEBUG;
  }
  print "just testing...\n" if DEBUG; # prints nothing
                                        (DEBUG is 0 again)
  use constant::lexical \%hash_of_constants;
  use constant::lexical WEEKDAYS => @weekdays; # list

  use constant::lexical { PIE        => 4 * atan2(1,1),
                          CHEESECAKE => 3 * atan2(1,1),
                         };

DESCRIPTION

This module creates compile-time constants in the manner of constant.pm, but makes them local to the enclosing scope.

WHY?

I sometimes use these for objects that are blessed arrays, which are faster than hashes. I use constants instead of keys, but I don't want them exposed as methods, so this is where lexical constants come in handy.

PREREQUISITES

This module requires perl 5.8.0 or later. If you are using a version of perl lower than 5.22.0, then you will need one of the following modules, which you can get from the CPAN:

For perl 5.12.0 and higher: Lexical::Sub
For lower perl versions: Sub::Delete

BUGS

The following three bugs have been fixed for perl 5.12.0 and higher, but are still present for older versions of perl:

These constants are no longer available at run time, so they won't work in a string "eval" (unless, of course, the "use" statement itself is inside the "eval").

These constants actually are accessible to other scopes during compile-time, as in the following example:

  sub foo { print "Debugging is on\n" if &{'DEBUG'} }
  {
          use constant::lexical DEBUG => 1;
          BEGIN { foo }
  }

If you switch to another package within a constant's scope, it (the constant) will apparently disappear.

If you find any other bugs, please report them to the author via e-mail.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The idea of using objects in "%^H" (in the pre-5.10 code) was stolen from namespace::clean. The idea of doing cleanup in a DELETE method on a tied field hash (in the 5.10 code) was likewise stolen from namespace::clean.

Some of the code for the perl 5.12.0+ version is plagiarised from constant.pm by Tom Phoenix.

AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you may redistribute or modify it (or both) under the same terms as perl.

POD ERRORS

Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:

Around line 248:: Non-ASCII character seen before =encoding in '‘package’'. Assuming UTF-8