NAME

Package::Relative - Support for '..' style relative paths in perl namespaces.

SYNOPSIS

package My::Pkg;

use Package::Relative;

(PKG . "..::Foo")->method; # My::Foo
(PKG . "Bar")->method; # My::Pkg::Bar

DESCRIPTION

This module exports the "PKG" function, which returns an overloaded object.

This object overloads the stringification and concatenation operations, treating ".." in paths as a relative notation. See the "SYNOPSIS".

EXPORTS

PKG

__PACKAGE__ work alike that returns an overloaded object instead of a string.

METHODS

stringify

Returns the string for the package.

concat

Implements the . operator.

AUTOLOAD

This is to support

PKG->method;

Although that is greatly discouraged. If you are doing that, why not use

__PACKAGE__->method;

In the future a warning might be emitted.

CAVEAT - THE CONCAT OPERATOR'S RETURN VALUE

When the object is the right hand side of a concatenation, e.g.

"Foo" . PKG;

Then an object is returned. This means that

my $pkg = PKG;
"Foo::${pkg}::..::Bar";

will DWIM.

On the other hand, when the object is the left hand side of a concatenation, a plain string is returned.

This means that

package My::Pkg;
PKG . "..::Foo" . "..::Bar";

is really equal to My::Foo..::Bar instead of what you'd expect.

The reason this is done is to simplify the generic case:

(PKG . "..::Foo")->method;

If an object were returned, method would have been dispatched to it, and AUTOLOAD yuckiness could not be avoided.

The workaround, which is not too bad is to always parenthesize:

PKG . ("..::Foo::" . "..::Bar"); # notice the extra colons after Foo