Subj : Re: anyone know of a language where nonexistent functions return
To   : comp.programming
From : Jonathan Bartlett
Date : Fri Jul 22 2005 02:57 pm

> So i'm intrigued now - what do folks use the feature for?

Several things:

a) delayed loading of large function libraries
b) automatically create getter/setter functions for classes
c) implement interesting APIs simply

For example, with (c) you could create a class that used the UNIX shell 
as an API.  Something like this (NOTE! Code not tested):

package UnixShell;

sub AUTOLOAD
{
	my $name = our $AUTOLOAD;
	*$AUTOLOAD = sub { shift; $args = join(map { /* quote parameters here 
*/ $_} @_, " "); $retval = `$name $args`; return $retval; }
	goto &$AUTOLOAD;
}

sub new
{
	my ($class) = @_;
	my $self = {};
	bless $self, $class;
	return $self;
}

Then you could do:

use UnixShell;

my $sh = UnixShell->new;
$output = $sh->grep("johnnyb@eskimo.com", "/var/log/maillog");

You could probably implement a pretty good XMLRPC or SOAP wrapper like 
that, too.

Jon
----
Learn to program using Linux assembly language
http://www.cafeshops.com/bartlettpublish.8640017

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