In Perl, is there ever any difference between the following two constructs: *main::foo = *main::bar and $main::{foo} = $main::{bar} They appear to have the same function (aliasing all of the ...

This example works fine: use File::Slurp qw(read_file); local *File::Slurp::read_file = sub { return 'test'; }; warn File::Slurp::read_file('/root/test.txt'); # return 'test' this one too: us...

Apparently, it's possible to store a "raw symbol" (as opposed to a reference to a symbol) in a scalar variable and use it in scalar contexts. How do you determine whether a scalar-valued expressio...

I am currently learning about Perls system of typeglobs and namespaces. So I wrote a module that takes two arguments the value and the name of a constant and exports the constant to the caller. The...

I'm working with legacy code and have to require a .pl file that defines a sub foo. My problem is that in my main:: namespace there already is another sub foo, which is called later in a part of th...

This is a code lifted straight from Perl Cookbook: @colors = qw(red blue green yellow orange purple violet); for my $name (@colors) { no strict 'refs'; *$name = sub { "<FONT COLOR='$name'>@_...

Given a typeglob, how can I find which types are actually defined? In my application, we user PERL as a simple configuration format. I'd like to require() the user config file, then be able to see...

I need to remove a method from the Perl symbol table at runtime. I attempted to do this using undef &Square::area, which does delete the function but leaves some traces behind. Specifically, wh...