NAME

Apache::Symbol - Things for symbol things

SYNOPSIS

 use Apache::Symbol ();
    
 @ISA = qw(Apache::Symbol);

DESCRIPTION

perlsub/Constant Functions says:

 If you redefine a subroutine which was eligible for inlining you'll get
 a mandatory warning.  (You can use this warning to tell whether or not a
 particular subroutine is considered constant.)  The warning is
 considered severe enough not to be optional because previously compiled
 invocations of the function will still be using the old value of the
 function.

mandatory warning means there is _no_ way to avoid this warning no matter what tricks you pull in Perl. This is bogus for us mod_perl users when restarting the server with PerlFreshRestart on or when Apache::StatINC pulls in a module that has changed on disk.

You can, however, pull some tricks with XS to avoid this warning, Apache::Symbol::undef does just that.

PLAYERS

This module and the undefining of functions is optional, if you wish to have this functionality enabled, there are one or more switches you need to know about.

PerlRestartHandler

Apache::Symbol defines a PerlRestartHandler which can be useful in conjuction with PerlFreshRestart On as it will avoid subroutine redefinition messages. Configure like so:

 PerlRestartHandler Apache::Symbol

Apache::Registry

By placing the SYNOPSIS bit in you script, Apache::Registry will undefine subroutines in your script before it is re-compiled to avoid "subroutine re-defined" warnings.

Apache::StatINC

See Apache::StatINC's docs.

APACHE_SYMBOL_UNIVERSAL

If this environment variable is true when Symbol.pm is compiled, it will define UNIVERSAL::undef_functions, which means all classes will inherit Apache::Symbol::undef_functions.

Others

Module such as HTML::Embperl and Apache::ePerl who compile and script cache scripts ala Apache::Registry style can use undef_functions with this bit of code:

    if($package->can('undef_functions')) {
        $package->undef_functions;
    }

Where $package is the name of the package in which the script is being re-compiled.

SEE ALSO

perlsub(1), Devel::Symdump(3)

AUTHOR

Doug MacEachern