[sf-perl] Meaning of an asterisk (*)

[nheller at silcon.com]

Thank you for your response.
You said that the final block of code was an error.
How would you change it so that it is well-written?


>>  can_ok( $song, 'player');
>>
>>  {
>>     package SongPlayer;
>>     use subs 'system';
>>     package main;
>>     my $fail = 0;
>>     my @args;
>>
>>     *SongPlayer::system = sub;
>>     {
>>         @args = @_;
>>         return $fail;
>>     };
>>

>>  4.  For that matter, what is the meaning of this entire line, and why
>> are
>>  the lines below it set into a block by braces?
>
> This is a bug.  The code meant to define an anonymous subroutine that
> does stuff (and then gets aliased as 'system' in the 'SongPlayer'
> package), but the semicolon after 'sub' creates an empty anonymous
> subroutine that does nothing, plus a section of code that will be run
> at the end of the script (rather than when it gets called).
>
> Garth