Question

Given a typeglob, how can I find which types are actually defined?

In my application, we user PERL as a simple configuration format.
I’d like to require() the user config file, then be able to see which variables are defined, as well as what types they are.

Code: (questionable quality advisory)

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my %before = %main::;
require "/path/to/my.config";
my %after = %main::;

foreach my $key (sort keys %after) {
    next if exists $before{$symbol}; 

    local *myglob = $after{$symbol};
    #the SCALAR glob is always defined, so we check the value instead
    if ( defined ${ *myglob{SCALAR} } ) {
        my $val = ${ *myglob{SCALAR} };
        print "\$$symbol = '".$val."'\n" ;
    }
    if ( defined *myglob{ARRAY} ) {
        my @val = @{ *myglob{ARRAY} };
        print "\@$symbol = ( '". join("', '", @val) . "' )\n" ;
    }
    if ( defined *myglob{HASH} ) {
        my %val = %{ *myglob{HASH} };
        print "\%$symbol = ( ";
        while(  my ($key, $val) = each %val )  {
            print "$key=>'$val', ";
        }
        print ")\n" ;
    }
}

my.config:

@A = ( a, b, c );
%B = ( b=>'bee' );
$C = 'see';

output:

@A = ( 'a', 'b', 'c' )
%B = ( b=>'bee', )
$C = 'see'
$_<my.config = 'my.config'

Answer 1

In the fully general case, you can’t do what you want thanks to the following excerpt from perlref:

*foo{THING} returns undef if that particular THING hasn’t been used yet, except in the case of scalars. *foo{SCALAR} returns a reference to an anonymous scalar if $foo hasn’t been used yet. This might change in a future release.

But if you’re willing to accept the restriction that any scalar must have a defined value to be detected, then you might use code such as

#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

open my $fh, "<", \$_;  # get DynaLoader out of the way

my %before = %main::;
require "my.config";
my %after = %main::;

foreach my $name (sort keys %after) {
  unless (exists $before{$name}) {
    no strict 'refs';
    my $glob = $after{$name};
    print "\$$name\n"             if defined ${ *{$glob}{SCALAR} };
    print "\@$name\n"             if defined    *{$glob}{ARRAY};
    print "%$name\n"              if defined    *{$glob}{HASH};
    print "&$name\n"              if defined    *{$glob}{CODE};
    print "$name (format)\n"      if defined    *{$glob}{FORMAT};
    print "$name (filehandle)\n"  if defined    *{$glob}{IO};
  }
}

will get you there.

With my.config of

$JACKPOT = 3_756_788;
$YOU_CANT_SEE_ME = undef;

@OPTIONS = qw/ apple cherries bar orange lemon /;

%CREDITS = (1 => 1, 5 => 6, 10 => 15);

sub is_jackpot {
  local $" = ""; # " fix Stack Overflow highlighting
  "@_[0,1,2]" eq "barbarbar";
}

open FH, "<", \$JACKPOT;

format WinMessage =
You win!
.

the output is

%CREDITS
FH (filehandle)
$JACKPOT
@OPTIONS
WinMessage (format)
&is_jackpot

---

Printing the names takes a little work, but we can use the Data::Dumper module to take part of the burden. The front matter is similar:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use Data::Dumper;
sub _dump {
  my($ref) = @_;
  local $Data::Dumper::Indent = 0;
  local $Data::Dumper::Terse  = 1;
  scalar Dumper $ref;
}

open my $fh, "<", \$_;  # get DynaLoader out of the way

my %before = %main::;
require "my.config";
my %after = %main::;

We need to dump the various slots slightly differently and in each case remove the trappings of references:

my %dump = (
  SCALAR => sub {
    my($ref,$name) = @_;
    return unless defined $$ref;
    "\$$name = " . substr _dump($ref), 1;
  },

  ARRAY => sub {
    my($ref,$name) = @_;
    return unless defined $ref;
    for ("\@$name = " . _dump $ref) {
      s/= \[/= (/;
      s/\]$/)/;
      return $_;
    }
  },

  HASH => sub {
    my($ref,$name) = @_;
    return unless defined $ref;
    for ("%$name = " . _dump $ref) {
      s/= \{/= (/;
      s/\}$/)/;
      return $_;
    }
  },
);

Finally, we loop over the set-difference between %before and %after:

foreach my $name (sort keys %after) {
  unless (exists $before{$name}) {
    no strict 'refs';
    my $glob = $after{$name};
    foreach my $slot (keys %dump) {
      my $var = $dump{$slot}(*{$glob}{$slot},$name);
      print $var, "\n" if defined $var;
    }
  }
}

Using the my.config from your question, the output is

$ ./prog.pl 
@A = ('a','b','c')
%B = ('b' => 'bee')
$C = 'see'