use Perl

After finally having realised that perl really does't do nested subs (lamented here) I decided to take the next obvious step and write a module that gives the illusion of having nested subs

#!/usr/bin/perl

package MySub;

use strict;

use Regexp::Common;

my $brackets_re     = $RE{balanced}{-parens => '{}'};
my $paren_re        = $RE{balanced}{-parens => '()'};

my $sub_name_re     = qr/[_a-zA-Z](?:\w+)?/;
my $sub_match_re    = qr/my\s+sub\s+($sub_name_re)\s*($brackets_re)\s*;?/x;

                      # my sub foobar { "code" }
                      # my               # 'my'
                      # \s+              # 1> space
                      # sub              # 'sub'
                      # \s+              # 1> space
                      # ($sub_name_re)   # '$subname'
                      # \s*              # 0> space
                      # ($brackets_re)   # balanced {}
                      # \s*              # 0> space
                      # ;?               # optional ';'

use Filter::Simple;

my @subs;
# FILTER_ONLY code => sub {
FILTER {
    my $code = $_;
    study $code;

    while(my($subname, $subcode) = $code =~ /$sub_match_re/s) {
        push @subs, {
            subname     => $subname,
            code        => $subcode
        };

        # 'my sub name {}' => 'my $name = sub {};'
        $code =~ s/$sub_match_re/my \$$1 = sub $2;\n/s;

        # '&name();' => '$name->();'
        $code =~ s/
                    &?               # optional &
                    $subname         # '$subname'
                    \s*              # 0> whitespace
                    (                # group $1
                        $paren_re    # balanced parens
                    )?               # optional group $1
                    \s*              # 0> whitespace
                    ;                # ';'
                  /"\$$subname->" . ($1 || '()') . ';'/sex;
    }

    $_ = $code;
};

qw(package activated);

Although the code is a little rough, it seems to DWIM so far. I haven't done any extensive testing (note to self - learn how to use test suites) but I havent found any problems as of yet. Once it's tidyed up a bit, I might even stick it on CPAN depending on the peoples' need for such an extension.

broquaint out