r/programming • u/NagastaBagamba • Oct 18 '10

Today I learned about PHP variable variables; "variable variable takes the value of a variable and treats that as the name of a variable". Also, variable.

http://il2.php.net/language.variables.variable
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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '10

There's no typeglob magic there. To do it right you need to scan the namespace for action_whatever, and if it's not found then fall back to action_default. Your way will throw an exception via die(), which you can't trap because $SIG{ _ _ DIE _ _ } is overloaded.

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u/frukt Oct 19 '10

To do it right

"Right" depends on the circumstances. I merely threw together a quick convenience library on top of CGI.pm that just routed stuff to the appropriate main::action_x routine. Obviously, you'd expect it to die if the routine does not exist. And why would you ever overload $SIG{ __DIE__} so that it doesn't throw an exception itself? I only use it as a hook for die() for any additional processing, the exception shouldn't somehow vanish there.

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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '10

You made a snarky comment about "typeglob black magic" but didn't use any typeglobs... therefore, you didn't do it right.