NAME

B::LintSubs - Perl compiler backend to check sub linkage

SYNOPSIS

perl -MO=LintSubs [FILE] [-e PROGRAM]

DESCRIPTION

When using use strict, subroutine names are not checked at the callsite; this makes the following a perfectly valid program at compiletime, that only blows up at runtime

            

              
              
use strict;
foobar();
            
          

When using the B::LintSubs checker instead, this is detected:

            

              
              
$ perl -MO=LintSubs -e 'use strict;
                        foobar();'
Undefined subroutine foobar called at -e line 2
            
          

Imported functions from other modules are of course detected:

            

              
              
$ perl -MO=LintSubs -e 'use strict; 
                        use List::Util qw( max );
                 $_ = max( 1, 2, 3 )'
-e syntax OK
            
          

In order to handle situations where external code is conditionally referenced at runtime, any fully-qualified references to other functions are printed with a warning, but not considered fatal. The programmer is assumed to Know What He Is Doing in this case:

            

              
              
$ perl -MO=LintSubs -e 'if( 1 ) { require Data::Dumper; 
                                  Data::Dumper::Dump( "Hello" ) }'
Unable to check call to Data::Dumper::Dump in foreign package at -e line 1
-e syntax OK
            
          

AUTHOR

Paul Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>

Based on the B::Lint module by Malcolm Beattie, <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk>.