NAME

B::LintSubs - Perl compiler backend to check sub linkage

SYNOPSIS

perl -MO=LintSubs [FILE] [-e PROGRAM]

DESCRIPTION

When using use strict, subroutine names are not checked at the callsite; this makes the following a perfectly valid program at compiletime, that only blows up at runtime

 use strict;
 foobar();

When using the B::LintSubs checker instead, this is detected:

 $ perl -MO=LintSubs -e 'use strict;
                         foobar();'
 Undefined subroutine foobar called at -e line 2

Imported functions from other modules are of course detected:

 $ perl -MO=LintSubs -e 'use strict; 
                         use List::Util qw( max );
                         $_ = max( 1, 2, 3 )'
 -e syntax OK

In order to handle situations where external code is conditionally referenced at runtime, any fully-qualified references to other functions are printed with a warning, but not considered fatal. The programmer is assumed to Know What He Is Doing in this case:

 $ perl -MO=LintSubs -e 'if( 1 ) { require Data::Dumper; 
                                   Data::Dumper::Dump( "Hello" ) }'
 Unable to check call to Data::Dumper::Dump in foreign package at -e line 1
 -e syntax OK

AUTHOR

Paul Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>

Based on the B::Lint module by Malcolm Beattie, <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk>.