1SUPER(3)              User Contributed Perl Documentation             SUPER(3)
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NAME

6       SUPER - control superclass method dispatch
7

SYNOPSIS

9       Find the parent method that would run if this weren't here:
10
11           sub my_method
12           {
13               my $self = shift;
14               my $super = $self->super('my_method'); # Who's your daddy?
15
16               if ($want_to_deal_with_this)
17               {
18                   # ...
19               }
20               else
21               {
22                   $super->($self, @_)
23               }
24           }
25
26       Or Ruby-style:
27
28           sub my_method
29           {
30               my $self = shift;
31
32               if ($want_to_deal_with_this)
33               {
34                   # ...
35               }
36               else
37               {
38                   super;
39               }
40           }
41
42       Or call the super method manually, with respect to inheritance, and
43       passing different arguments:
44
45           sub my_method
46           {
47               my $self = shift;
48
49               # parent handles args backwardly
50               $self->SUPER( reverse @_ );
51           }
52

DESCRIPTION

54       When subclassing a class, you occasionally want to dispatch control to
55       the superclass -- at least conditionally and temporarily. The Perl
56       syntax for calling your superclass is ugly and unwieldy:
57
58           $self->SUPER::method(@_);
59
60       especially when compared to its Ruby equivalent:
61
62           super;
63
64       It's even worse in that the normal Perl redispatch mechanism only
65       dispatches to the parent of the class containing the method at compile
66       time.  That doesn't work very well for mixins and roles.
67
68       This module provides nicer equivalents, along with the universal method
69       "super" to determine a class' own superclass. This allows you to do
70       things such as:
71
72           goto &{$_[0]->super('my_method')};
73
74       if you don't like wasting precious stack frames.
75
76       If you are using roles or mixins or otherwise pulling in methods from
77       other packages that need to dispatch to their super methods, or if you
78       want to pass different arguments to the super method, use the SUPER()
79       method:
80
81           $self->SUPER( qw( other arguments here ) );
82

FUNCTIONS and METHODS

84       This module provides the following functions and methods:
85
86       super()
87           This function calls the super method of the currently-executing
88           method, no matter where the super method is in the hierarchy.
89
90           This takes no arguments; it passes the same arguments passed to the
91           currently-executing method.
92
93           The module exports this function by default.
94
95           Note: you must have the appropriate "package" declaration in place
96           for this to work.  That is, you must have compiled the method in
97           which you use this function in the package from which you want to
98           use it.  Them's the breaks with Perl 5.
99
100       "find_parent( $class, $method, $prune, $invocant )"
101           Attempts to find a parent implementation of $method starting with
102           $class.  If you pass $prune, it will not ignore the method found in
103           that package, if it exists there.  Pass $invocant if the object
104           itself might have a different idea of its parents.
105
106           The module does not export this function by default.  Call it
107           directly.
108
109       "get_all_parents( $invocant, $class )"
110           Returns all of the parents for the $invocant, if it supports the
111           "__get_parents()" method or the contents of @ISA for $class.  You
112           probably oughtn't call this on your own.
113
114       SUPER()
115           Calls the super method of the currently-executing method.  You can
116           pass arguments.  This is a method.
117

NOTES

119       Beware: if you do weird things with code generation, be sure to name
120       your anonymous subroutines.  See Perl Hacks #57.
121
122       Using "super" doesn't let you pass alternate arguments to your
123       superclass's method. If you want to pass different arguments, use
124       "SUPER" instead.  D'oh.
125
126       This module does a small amount of Deep Magic to find the arguments of
127       method calling super() itself.  This may confuse tools such as
128       "Devel::Cover".
129
130       In your own code, if you do complicated things with proxy objects and
131       the like, define "__get_parents()" to return a list of all parents of
132       the object to which you really want to dispatch.
133

AUTHOR

135       Created by Simon Cozens, "simon@cpan.org".  Copyright (c) 2003 Simon
136       Cozens.
137
138       Maintained by chromatic, <chromatic at wgz dot org> after version 1.01.
139       Copyright (c) 2004-2019 chromatic.
140
141       Thanks to Joshua ben Jore for bug reports and suggestions.
142

LICENSE

144       You may use and distribute this silly little module under the same
145       terms as Perl itself.
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149perl v5.36.0                      2023-01-20                          SUPER(3)