Living with smart match breakage

[Gianni Ceccarelli]

On 2013-06-13 gvim <gvimrc at gmail.com> wrote:
> I hear Perl 5.18 issues warnings when the smart match operator is
> used

Yes, and also when C<given> / C<when> are used.

> and some convoluted boilerplate is necessary to work around
> them.

That boilerplate is spelled:

   no warnings 'experimental::smartmatch';

or, if you want your code to work unmodified under 5.16 and 5.18 (and
probably all other versions):

  use experimental 'smartmatch';

(see https://metacpan.org/release/experimental )

> Since my use of given/when and smart match is quite simplistic

Good.

> I'm wondering if the breakage is relevant to the code I write.

Probably not, but my definition of "simplistic" may not be the same as
yours.


> A quick search hasn't produced any definitive list of these edge
> cases

Let's put it like this: if you are not daunted by the documentation of
the C<~~> operator (see L<perlop/Smartmatch Operator>, 23 cases), and
by the additional cases when it's used inside C<when> (see
L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>, 10 more cases), you
are much smarter and brave than I am.

> My approach is to keep it simple and defer upgrading beyond 5.16
> until it's fixed.

My approach is to keep using it in the 2-3 cases we already do
(essentially, dispatch based on exception objects inside a
L<Try::Tiny> C<catch> coderef), adding C<use experimental
'smartmatch'> where appropriate.

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