constant(3)
NAME
constant - Perl pragma to declare constants
SYNOPSIS
use constant PI => 4 * atan2(1, 1);
use constant DEBUG => 0;
print "Pi equals ", PI, "...\n" if DEBUG;
use constant {
SEC => 0,
MIN => 1,
HOUR => 2,
MDAY => 3,
MON => 4,
YEAR => 5,
WDAY => 6,
YDAY => 7,
ISDST => 8,
};
use constant WEEKDAYS => qw(
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
);
print "Today is ", (WEEKDAYS)[ (localtime)[WDAY] ], ".\n";
DESCRIPTION
This will declare a symbol to be a constant with the given value.
When you declare a constant such as "PI" using the method shown above,
each machine your script runs upon can have as many digits of accuracy
as it can use. Also, your program will be easier to read, more likely
to be maintained (and maintained correctly), and far less likely to
send a space probe to the wrong planet because nobody noticed the one
equation in which you wrote 3.14195.
When a constant is used in an expression, perl replaces it with its
value at compile time, and may then optimize the expression further.
In particular, any code in an "if (CONSTANT)" block will be optimized
away if the constant is false.
NOTES
As with all "use" directives, defining a constant happens at compile
time. Thus, it's probably not correct to put a constant declaration
inside of a conditional statement (like "if ($foo) { use constant ...
}").
Constants defined using this module cannot be interpolated into strings
like variables. However, concatenation works just fine:
print "Pi equals PI...\n"; # WRONG: does not expand "PI"
print "Pi equals ".PI."...\n"; # right
Even though a reference may be declared as a constant, the reference
may point to data which may be changed, as this code shows.
use constant ARRAY => [ 1,2,3,4 ];
print ARRAY->[1];
ARRAY->[1] = " be changed";
print ARRAY->[1];
Dereferencing constant references incorrectly (such as using an array
subscript on a constant hash reference, or vice versa) will be trapped
at compile time.
Constants belong to the package they are defined in. To refer to a
constant defined in another package, specify the full package name, as
in "Some::Package::CONSTANT". Constants may be exported by modules,
and may also be called as either class or instance methods, that is, as
"Some::Package->CONSTANT" or as "$obj->CONSTANT" where $obj is an
instance of "Some::Package". Subclasses may define their own constants
to override those in their base class.
The use of all caps for constant names is merely a convention, although
it is recommended in order to make constants stand out and to help
avoid collisions with other barewords, keywords, and subroutine names.
Constant names must begin with a letter or underscore. Names beginning
with a double underscore are reserved. Some poor choices for names will
generate warnings, if warnings are enabled at compile time.
List constants
Constants may be lists of more (or less) than one value. A constant
with no values evaluates to "undef" in scalar context. Note that con-
stants with more than one value do not return their last value in
scalar context as one might expect. They currently return the number
of values, but this may change in the future. Do not use constants
with multiple values in scalar context.
NOTE: This implies that the expression defining the value of a constant
is evaluated in list context. This may produce surprises:
use constant TIMESTAMP => localtime; # WRONG!
use constant TIMESTAMP => scalar localtime; # right
The first line above defines "TIMESTAMP" as a 9-element list, as
returned by localtime() in list context. To set it to the string
returned by localtime() in scalar context, an explicit "scalar" keyword
is required.
List constants are lists, not arrays. To index or slice them, they
must be placed in parentheses.
my @workdays = WEEKDAYS[1 .. 5]; # WRONG!
my @workdays = (WEEKDAYS)[1 .. 5]; # right
Defining multiple constants at once
Instead of writing multiple "use constant" statements, you may define
multiple constants in a single statement by giving, instead of the con-
stant name, a reference to a hash where the keys are the names of the
constants to be defined. Obviously, all constants defined using this
method must have a single value.
use constant {
FOO => "A single value",
BAR => "This", "won't", "work!", # Error!
};
This is a fundamental limitation of the way hashes are constructed in
Perl. The error messages produced when this happens will often be
quite cryptic -- in the worst case there may be none at all, and you'll
only later find that something is broken.
When defining multiple constants, you cannot use the values of other
constants defined in the same declaration. This is because the calling
package doesn't know about any constant within that group until after
the "use" statement is finished.
use constant {
BITMASK => 0xAFBAEBA8,
NEGMASK => ~BITMASK, # Error!
};
Magic constants
Magical values and references can be made into constants at compile
time, allowing for way cool stuff like this. (These error numbers
aren't totally portable, alas.)
use constant E2BIG => ($! = 7);
print E2BIG, "\n"; # something like "Arg list too long"
print 0+E2BIG, "\n"; # "7"
You can't produce a tied constant by giving a tied scalar as the value.
References to tied variables, however, can be used as constants without
any problems.
TECHNICAL NOTES
In the current implementation, scalar constants are actually inlinable
subroutines. As of version 5.004 of Perl, the appropriate scalar con-
stant is inserted directly in place of some subroutine calls, thereby
saving the overhead of a subroutine call. See "Constant Functions" in
perlsub for details about how and when this happens.
In the rare case in which you need to discover at run time whether a
particular constant has been declared via this module, you may use this
function to examine the hash %constant::declared. If the given constant
name does not include a package name, the current package is used.
sub declared ($) {
use constant 1.01; # don't omit this!
my $name = shift;
$name =~ s/^::/main::/;
my $pkg = caller;
my $full_name = $name =~ /::/ ? $name : "${pkg}::$name";
$constant::declared{$full_name};
}
BUGS
In the current version of Perl, list constants are not inlined and some
symbols may be redefined without generating a warning.
It is not possible to have a subroutine or a keyword with the same name
as a constant in the same package. This is probably a Good Thing.
A constant with a name in the list "STDIN STDOUT STDERR ARGV ARGVOUT
ENV INC SIG" is not allowed anywhere but in package "main::", for tech-
nical reasons.
Unlike constants in some languages, these cannot be overridden on the
command line or via environment variables.
You can get into trouble if you use constants in a context which auto-
matically quotes barewords (as is true for any subroutine call). For
example, you can't say $hash{CONSTANT} because "CONSTANT" will be
interpreted as a string. Use $hash{CONSTANT()} or $hash{+CONSTANT} to
prevent the bareword quoting mechanism from kicking in. Similarly,
since the "=>" operator quotes a bareword immediately to its left, you
have to say "CONSTANT() => 'value'" (or simply use a comma in place of
the big arrow) instead of "CONSTANT => 'value'".
AUTHOR
Tom Phoenix, <rootbeer@redcat.com>, with help from many other folks.
Multiple constant declarations at once added by Casey West,
<casey@geeknest.com>.
Documentation mostly rewritten by Ilmari Karonen, <perl@itz.pp.sci.fi>.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1997, 1999 Tom Phoenix
This module is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.8.8 2006-06-14 constant(3)
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