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Postings from June 2020
TL;DR: I believe it impossible to write a dual-life module using
function prototypes that works on both perl 5 and perl 7.
I have been experimenting with what it might be like to maintain a dual
perl5-and-7 module that uses prototypes on functions. Core's List::Util
would be a good candidate except it's all written in XS, so never mind.
Next on my list is List::UtilsBy.
Right now it has lots of code looking like
sub sort_by(&@) { ... }
So, first off I trivially just rewrite all of those into
sub sort_by :prototype(&@) { ... }
And hey presto, my module works fine on 5.20 onwards, and presumably 7.
Now all I have to do is handle the pre-5.20s, right? ;)
HAH!
$ perl5.18.2 lib/List/UtilsBy.pm
Invalid CODE attribute: prototype(&@) at lib/List/UtilsBy.pm line 147.
So my first thought was to inject a MODIFY_CODE_ATTRIBUTES.
Simply put, this doesn't work. A naive attempt which invokes
Sub::Util::set_prototype silently has no side-effect - it doesn't warn
or fail, it just doesn't set the prototype. I haven't investigated why
yet, but I have a bug open:
https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=132889
I think it's probably because MODIFY_CODE_ATTRIBUTES runs too early in
the parser. I have to defer it until UNITCHECK time. See more code
above.
While that works, it produces lots of warnings:
CODE package attribute may clash with future reserved word: prototype at lib/List/UtilsBy.pm line 147.
OK, well I can sortof fix that one too, by injecting a
`no warnings 'reserved'".
So the current code in List/UtilsBy.pm looks like:
BEGIN {
if( $] < 5.020 ) {
require Sub::Util; Sub::Util->VERSION( '1.40' );
warnings->unimport( qw( reserved ) );
my @prototypes;
*MODIFY_CODE_ATTRIBUTES = sub {
my ( $pkg, $code, @attrs ) = @_;
my @ret;
foreach my $attr ( @attrs ) {
if( $attr =~ m/^prototype\((.*)\)$/ ) {
my $prototype = "$1";
push @prototypes, [ $code, $prototype ];
next;
}
push @ret, $attr;
}
return @ret;
};
UNITCHECK {
foreach ( @prototypes ) {
my ( $code, $prototype ) = @$_;
Sub::Util::set_prototype( $_->[1], $_->[0] );
}
}
}
}
And note that there are two large problems still unaddressed here:
1) This code has to suppress all "reserved" warnings, not just those
relating to the :prototype attribute
2) This code has to appear in List/UtilsBy.pm directly because of that
UNITCHECK phaser. It would not be possible to inject this entire
thing via a module.
Point 1 is a slight annoyance, but point 2 really is the killer. If
we're already worried about people having to copy lines of boilerplate
about "use strict; use warnings;" around the place I'd hate to have to
copy the above ~30 lines of code between every one of my
prototypes-using modules.
I had originally hoped to move all this code into a simple module we
could `use`:
use Sub::Attribute::Prototype;
Such a module would be a no-op on 5.20+, and inject something like the
above code on earlier perls. But the presence of that UNITCHECK phaser
appears to make this impossible. I haven't investigated the RT bug
linked above yet, but I suspect it won't be an easy fix because of the
order in which operations happen. Operations that are already fixed in
the design of older perl interpreters; remember this is a pre-5.20 only
problem. Even if I do find a fix for that issue, it will likely need a
new version of the XS module, which adds a little annoyance but not
impossible. That still leaves unfixed the `reserved` warnings though.
Someone - please prove me wrong. Please demonstrate a way to write a
prototype-using module that will work nicely on perls older than 5.20,
and also on 7. I allege it cannot be done.
--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans
leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
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