Thanks jandrew For the tip on using triggers. It is certainly a step in the right direction as it will allow me to move all the binary unpacking code into one method, that will populate all the fields in the class at once.

For my project, I am only relay interested in reading binary data, not writing it. If I where trying to write it as well, then I am not sure that using writers would be helpful, as it looks like that will just create the same problem of lots of very similar methods with very similar boilerplate code. I think an easier approach would be to create a custom reader method on rawDataBlock that will re-construct the binary data by packing all the field members.

Also, thanks for the link to merlyn's tutorials. I will certainly read them. One problem I have with Moose is there is too much documentation, and it can be hard to find a simplified introduction.