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Perl::Critic::Policy::Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking - Always unpack "@_" first.

Affiliation

       This Policy is part of the core Perl::Critic distribution.

Author

       Chris Dolan <cdolan@cpan.org>

Caveats

       PPI doesn't currently detect anonymous subroutines, so we don't check those.  This should just work when
       PPI gains that feature.

       We don't check for @ARG, the alias for @_ from English.pm.  That's deprecated anyway.

Configuration

       This policy is lenient for subroutines which have "N" or fewer top-level statements, where "N" defaults
       to ZERO.  You can override this to set it to a higher number with the "short_subroutine_statements"
       setting.  This is very much not recommended but perhaps you REALLY need high performance.  To do this,
       put entries in a .perlcriticrc file like this:

         [Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking]
         short_subroutine_statements = 2

       By default this policy does not allow you to specify array subscripts when you unpack arguments (i.e. by
       an array slice or by referencing individual elements).  Should you wish to permit this, you can do so
       using the "allow_subscripts" setting. This defaults to false.  You can set it true like this:

         [Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking]
         allow_subscripts = 1

       The delegation logic can be configured to allow delegation other than to "SUPER::" or "NEXT::". The
       configuration item is "allow_delegation_to", and it takes a space-delimited list of allowed delegates. If
       a given delegate ends in a double colon, anything in the given namespace is allowed. If it does not, only
       that subroutine is allowed. For example, to allow "next::method" from "Class::C3" and _delegate from the
       current namespace in addition to SUPER and NEXT, the following configuration could be used:

         [Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking]
         allow_delegation_to = next::method _delegate

       Argument validation tools such as Params::Validate generate a closure which is used to unpack and
       validate the arguments of a subroutine. In order to recognize closures as a valid way to unpack arguments
       you must enable them explicitly:

         [Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking]
         allow_closures = 1

Credits

       Initial development of this policy was supported by a grant from the Perl Foundation.

Description

       Subroutines that use @_ directly instead of unpacking the arguments to local variables first have two
       major problems.  First, they are very hard to read.  If you're going to refer to your variables by number
       instead of by name, you may as well be writing assembler code!  Second, @_ contains aliases to the
       original variables!  If you modify the contents of a @_ entry, then you are modifying the variable
       outside of your subroutine.  For example:

          sub print_local_var_plus_one {
              my ($var) = @_;
              print ++$var;
          }
          sub print_var_plus_one {
              print ++$_[0];
          }

          my $x = 2;
          print_local_var_plus_one($x); # prints "3", $x is still 2
          print_var_plus_one($x);       # prints "3", $x is now 3 !
          print $x;                     # prints "3"

       This is spooky action-at-a-distance and is very hard to debug if it's not intentional and well-documented
       (like "chop" or "chomp").

       An exception is made for the usual delegation idiom "$object->SUPER::something( @_ )". Only "SUPER::" and
       "NEXT::" are recognized (though this is configurable) and the argument list for the delegate must consist
       only of "( @_ )".

Name

       Perl::Critic::Policy::Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking - Always unpack "@_" first.

See Also