Perl Cookbook

Calling Methods Indirectly

Problem

You want to call a method by a name that isn’t known until run time.

Solution

Store the method name as a string in a scalar variable and use it where you would use the real method name to the right of the arrow operator:

$methname = "flicker";
$obj->$methname(10);         # calls $ob->flicker(10);

# call three methods on the object, by name
foreach $m ( qw(start run stop) ) {
    $obj->$m();
}

Discussion

Sometimes you need to call a method whose name you’ve stored somewhere. You can’t take the address of a method, but you can store its name. If you have a scalar variable $meth containing the method name, call the method on an object $crystal with $crystal->$meth().

@methods = qw(name rank serno);
%his_info = map { $_ => $ob->$_() } @methods;

# same as this:

%his_info = (
    'name'  => $ob->name(),
    'rank'  => $ob->rank(),
    'serno' => $ob->serno(),
);

If you’re desperate to devise a way to get a method’s address, you should try to rethink your algorithm. For example, instead of incorrectly taking \$ob->method(), which simply applies the backslash to that method’s return value or values, do this:

my $fnref = sub { $ob->method(@_) };

Now when it’s time to call that indirectly, you would use:

$fnref->(10, "fred");

and have it correctly really call:

$obj->method(10, "fred");

This works even if $ob has gone out of scope. This solution is much cleaner.

The code reference returned by the UNIVERSAL can() method should probably not be used as an indirect method call. That’s because you ...