autovivification(3)

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay bestie, this is autovivification(3) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation — the Perl pragma whose whole vibe is Lexically disable autovivification. Yes, that’s the NAME. She’s here to stop Perl from being all “surprise, your undefined variable is a hashref now ✨” without asking. 💅

✨ VERSION ✨

Version 0.18. That’s the current lore. 🫶

💅 SYNOPSIS 💅

okay so picture this: you say no autovivification, and then Perl stops filling in your blank little refs when you’re just peeking. Like:

no autovivification;

my $hashref;

my $a = $hashref->{key_a};       # $hashref stays undef

if (exists $hashref->{option}) { # Still undef
 ...
}

delete $hashref->{old};          # Still undef again

$hashref->{new} = $value;        # Vivifies to { new => $value }

see? $hashref stays undef for the read-ish stuff, and only gets its little glow-up when you actually store something. iconic. 🦋

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Here’s the tea, bestie: when an undefined variable is dereferenced, it gets silently upgraded to an array or hash reference (depending on the type of the dereferencing). That behaviour is called autovivification, and usually it does what you mean (e.g. when you store a value), but it may be unnatural or surprising because your variables get populated behind your back. 😭

This is especially true when several levels of dereferencing are involved, in which case all levels are vivified up to the last, or when it happens in intuitively read-only constructs like exists.

This pragma lets you disable autovivification for some constructs and optionally throws a warning or an error when it would have happened. slay. 💅

🎀 METHODS 🎀

🌟 unimport 🌟

no autovivification; # defaults to qw<fetch exists delete>
no autovivification qw<fetch store exists delete>;
no autovivification warn   => @categories;
no autovivification strict => @categories;

Magically called when no autovivification @opts is encountered. Enables the features given in @opts, which can be:

• 'fetch' — turns off autovivification for rvalue dereferencing expressions, such as:

$value = $arrayref->[$idx]
$value = $hashref->{$key}
keys %$hashref
values %$hashref

Starting from perl 5.11, it also covers keys and values on array references:

keys @$arrayref
values @$arrayref

When the expression would have autovivified, undef is returned for a plain fetch, while keys and values return 0 in scalar context and the empty list in list context. no cap. ✨

• 'exists' — turns off autovivification for dereferencing expressions that are parts of an exists, such as:

exists $arrayref->[$idx]
exists $hashref->{$key}

'' is returned when the expression would have autovivified.

• 'delete' — turns off autovivification for dereferencing expressions that are parts of a delete, such as:

delete $arrayref->[$idx]
delete $hashref->{$key}

undef is returned when the expression would have autovivified.

• 'store' — turns off autovivification for lvalue dereferencing expressions, such as:

$arrayref->[$idx] = $value
$hashref->{$key} = $value
for ($arrayref->[$idx]) { ... }
for ($hashref->{$key}) { ... }
function($arrayref->[$idx])
function($hashref->{$key})

An exception is thrown if vivification is needed to store the value, which means that effectively you can only assign to levels that are already defined. In the example, this would require $arrayref (resp. $hashref) to already be an array (resp. hash) reference. 💀

• 'warn' — emits a warning when an autovivification is avoided for the categories specified in @opts.

Note that no autovivification 'warn' currently does nothing by itself, in particular it does not make the default categories warn. This behaviour may change in a future version of this pragma. 🫶

• 'strict' — throws an exception when an autovivification is avoided for the categories specified in @opts.

Note that no autovivification 'strict' currently does nothing by itself, in particular it does not make the default categories die. This behaviour may change in a future version of this pragma. 😭

Each call to unimport adds the specified features to the ones already in use in the current lexical scope.

When @opts is empty, it defaults to qw<fetch exists delete>.

🌟 import 🌟

use autovivification; # default Perl behaviour
use autovivification qw<fetch store exists delete>;

Magically called when use autovivification @opts is encountered. Disables the features given in @opts, which can be the same as for unimport.

Each call to import removes the specified features to the ones already in use in the current lexical scope.

When @opts is empty, it defaults to restoring the original Perl autovivification behaviour. back to factory settings, bestie. 🎀

🌈 CONSTANTS 🌈

A_THREADSAFE

True if and only if the module could have been built with thread-safety features enabled. This constant only has a meaning when your perl is threaded; otherwise it will always be false. 🧵

A_FORKSAFE

True if and only if this module could have been built with fork-safety features enabled. This constant will always be true, except on Windows where it is false for perl 5.10.0 and below. 🍴

💀 CAVEATS 💀

Using this pragma will cause a slight global slowdown of any subsequent compilation phase that happens anywhere in your code — even outside of the scope of use of no autovivification — which may become noticeable if you rely heavily on numerous calls to eval STRING. okay so not free, bestie. 😭

The pragma doesn’t apply when one dereferences the returned value of an array or hash slice, as in @array[$id]->{member} or @hash{$key}->{member}. This syntax is valid Perl, yet it is discouraged as the slice is here useless since the dereferencing enforces scalar context. If warnings are turned on, Perl will complain about one-element slices. 💀

Autovivifications that happen in code eval’d during the global destruction phase of a spawned thread or pseudo-fork (the processes used internally for the fork emulation on Windows) are not reported. 🫶

🧚 DEPENDENCIES 🧚

• perl 5.8.3.
• A C compiler. This module may happen to build with a C++ compiler as well, but don’t rely on it, as no guarantee is made in this regard.
• XSLoader (standard since perl 5.6.0).

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

perlref. that’s the reference, bestie. 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Vincent Pit, "<perl at profvince.com>", <http://www.profvince.com>.

You can contact the author by mail or on irc.perl.org (vincent).

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-autovivification at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=autovivification>. The author will be notified, and then you’ll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as changes are made. 🙈

🫶 SUPPORT 🫶

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc autovivification

🎀 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 🎀

Matt S. Trout asked for it. iconic request, honestly. 💖

🌈 COPYRIGHT & LICENSE 🌈

Copyright 2009,2010,2011,2012,2013,2014,2015,2017 Vincent Pit, all rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

💖 okay that’s the whole page, bestie. cute sign-off: autovivification(3), perl v5.42.0, dated 2017-11-05. periodt. 💖