QA » openQA Project

One solution could be a tied scalar (using () parens to visualize the tied value):

% cat currenttest.pm
package currenttest;
use strict;
use warnings;
use experimental 'signatures';
use base 'Tie::Scalar';
use base 'Exporter';
our @EXPORT_OK = qw(current_test set_current_test);

my $current_test;
sub set_current_test ($value) { $current_test = "($value)" }
sub current_test () { $current_test }

sub TIESCALAR ($class, $value) {
    set_current_test($value);
    return bless {}, $class;
}

sub FETCH ($self) { current_test() }
sub STORE ($self, $value) { set_current_test($value) }

1;

% cat tiedscalar.pl
package main;
use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;

use currenttest qw(current_test set_current_test);

tie my $s, 'currenttest', "foo";
say $s;
$s = 23;
say $s;
set_current_test("method call");
say $s;

my $new = $s;
$new = "new";
say $new;

% perl -I. tiedscalar.pl
(foo)
(23)
(method call)
new

This way the old $autotest::current_test variable could stay where it is for old code that uses it, but it would be tied to the new variable in currenttest.pm, which we could also use in our internal code.