Mike B

Of course as Perl developers we all love new features, don't we?

So the moment we could work with perl 5.10 we all started using smartmatch, right? If not for the only reason it allows us to write elegant code like this:

use v5.10.1;
@array = qw ( Thom Jonny Colin Ed Phil );
say "I found Phil!" if 'Phil' ~~ @array;

But now we have perl 5.18 and some of the ideas of smartmatch turned out to be a little too smart, and so we now consider it an experimental feature. So even code like this, when executed on a 5.18 perl, gives warnings:

Smartmatch is experimental at smart.pl line 3.
I found Phil!

brian d foy wrote about how to stop these warnings, but it's not pretty:

no warnings 'experimental::smartmatch';

This works under perl 5.18 but gives nasty error messages under older perls:

Unknown warnings category 'experimental::smartmatch' at smart.pl line 3.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at smart.pl line 3.

so the 'best' way to do it is like below:

no if $] >= 5.017011, warnings => 'experimental::smartmatch';

Ugly, right? That is why Leon Timmermans created experimental, a CPAN module that allows you to simply write:

use experimental 'smartmatch';

That's much better! I can remember that, and it's readable. I hope you like it as much as I do!

Of course this does not alleviate the problem that smartmatch is now considered experimental, which means that its implementation is probably going to change in upcoming perls.