NAME

UNIVERSAL::ref - Turns ref() into a multimethod

SYNOPSIS

# True! Wrapper pretends to be Thing.
ref( Wrapper->new( Thing->new ) )
  eq ref( Thing->new );

package Thing;
sub new { bless [], shift }

package Wrapper;
sub new {
    my ($class,$proxy) = @_;
    bless \ $proxy, $class;
}
sub ref {
    my $self = shift @_;
    return $$self;
}

DESCRIPTION

This module changes the behavior of the builtin function ref(). If ref() is called on an object that has requested an overloaded ref, the object's ->ref method will be called and its return value used instead.

USING

To enable this feature for a class, use UNIVERSAL::ref in your class. Here is a sample proxy module.

package Pirate;
# Pirate pretends to be a Privateer
use UNIVERSAL::ref;
sub new { bless {}, shift }
sub ref { return 'Privateer' }

Anywhere you call ref($obj) on a Pirate object, it will allow Pirate to lie and pretend to be something else.

TODO

Currently UNIVERSAL::ref must be installed before any ref() calls that are to be affected.

I think ref() always occurs in an implicit scalar context. There is no accomodation for list context.

UNIVERSAL::ref probably shouldn't allow a module to lie to itself. Or should it?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ambrus for the excellent idea to overload defined() to allow Perl 5 to have Perl 6's "interesting values of undef."

chromatic for pointing out how utterly broken ref() is. This fix covers its biggest hole.

AUTHOR

Joshua ben Jore - jjore@cpan.org

LICENSE

The standard Artistic / GPL license most other perl code is typically using.