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Re: 5.8.2 coredump: tied hashes implemented as XSUB methods

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From:
Alan Burlison
Date:
November 17, 2003 17:05
Subject:
Re: 5.8.2 coredump: tied hashes implemented as XSUB methods
Message ID:
3FB9704F.2080606@sun.com
Nicholas Clark wrote:

> IIRC (confirmed by looking at hv.c)
> 
> SvREADONLY on the hv makes the hash a restricted hash
> (can't add new keys, can't access keys not present, can delete keys)

 From looking at my test script, in 5.6.1 it looks like readonlyness on a 
hash only prevented you from deleting, not from adding new keys.

> SvREADONLY on a key also prevents it from being deleted.
> 
> (as well as the regular effects of readonlyness)

Umm, what exactly do you mean by 'regular'?  Surely deletion is the only 
thing you can do to a hash key anyway?  Do you mean it also makes the 
associated value readonly, or would that have to be set seperately?

> I think that the implementation should have been marked "subject to change"
> as it's not that clean.

As well as the fact that it breaks existing code :-(  FYI, the module in 
question is Sun::Solaris::Kstat, used by the Solaris-specific /bin/kstat 
command.  It's more than a little inconvenient that this is broken between 
5.6.1 and 5.8.2, as I have to ship both perl versions in Solaris 10.

When 'restricted hashes' were added did anyone check that XSUB code which 
uses them still behaves sensibly on older versions of perl?  You always 
could SvREADONLY_on/off on hashes in 5.6.1, it's unfortunate that the 
restricted hashes stuff has broken older code.

-- 
Alan Burlison
--


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