New version of Method::Signatures on its way to CPAN, now with reference aliasing.
package Stuff;
use Method::Signatures;
method foo(\@bar) {
$_++ for @bar;
}
my @list = (1,2,3);
Stuff->foo(\@list);
print "@list"; # 2 3 4
No more having to muck around with reference syntax.
This currently incurs a 20% performance penalty vs an empty subroutine using the normal argument passing techniques. But once that cost is paid there's no further cost for using the aliasing, so for a method of any size it won't matter. You only pay that cost on methods which use it.
How does it work? My first thought was to use
Data::Bind but that slowed down methods by about 400x. Now it's just an our/local hack. The above is equivalent to...
sub foo {
my $self = shift;
our(@bar);
local(@bar);
*bar = $_[0];
$_++ for @bar;
}
...except I just noticed closures don't work.
Crap.
*UPDATE* Using Data::Alias, 0.05 eliminates the performance penalty and closures work.
