SYNOPSIS

use v5.10;
use match::smart;

if ($this |M| $that)
{
say "$this matches $that";
}

DESCRIPTION

match::smart provides a match operator "|M|" that acts like more or less identically to the (as of Perl 5.18) deprecated smart match operator.

If you don't like the crazy Sub::Infix operator, you can alternatively export a more normal function:

   use v5.10;
   use match::smart qw(match);
   
   if (match($this, $that))
   {
      say "$this matches $that";
   }

Differences with ~~

There were major changes to smart match between 5.10.0 and 5.10.1. This module attempts to emulate the behaviour of the operator in more recent versions of Perl. In particular, 5.18.0 (minus the warnings). Divergences not noted below should be considered bugs.

While the real smart match operator implicitly takes references to operands that are hashes or arrays, match::smart's operator does not.

   @foo ~~ %bar       # means: \@foo ~~ \%bar
   @foo |M| %bar      # means: scalar(@foo) |M| scalar(%bar)

If you want the "\@foo ~~ \%bar" behaviour, you need to add the backslashes yourself:

   \@foo |M| \%bar

Similarly:

   "foo" ~~  /foo/    # works
   "foo" |M| /foo/    # no worky!
   "foo" |M| qr/foo/  # do this instead

match::smart treats the "MATCH" method on blessed objects (if it exists) like an overloaded "~~". This is for compatibility with match::simple, and for compatibility with pre-5.10 Perls that don't allow overloading "~~".

AUTHOR

Toby Inkster <[email protected]>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

This software is copyright (c) 2013-2014 by Toby Inkster.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.