Does Perl monkey-patching allow you to see the patched package's scope?

Question

I'm monkey patching a package using a technique given at the beginning of "How can I monkey-patch an instance method in Perl?". The problem that I'm running into is that the original subroutine used a package-level my variable which the patched subroutine appears not to have access to, either by full path specification or implicit use.

Is there any way to get at the data scoped in this way for use in the patched subroutine?

Answer 1

You can obtain lexicals with the PadWalker module. Evil, but it works.

Answer 2

No. The thing you're mistaken in is that they are not package scoped. A lexical variable is by definition limited to its lexical scope, in other words, the block it is in.

Answer 3

Lexicals (ie: declared with 'my') are not visible outside the lexical scope (file or block) in which they are declared. That's the whole point of lexical variables.

If there is a subroutine/method which is in the same scope as the lexical var, then it can return the value of the lexical and that can allow indirect access to the var from outside its scope.

There is no such thing as a 'full path specification' for lexical variables. That's for package variables. If the var was declared with 'our' instead of 'my' you could do that.