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Re: Beware can for attrs

by runrig (Abbot)
on Dec 14, 2002 at 16:56 UTC ( [id://219869]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Beware can for attrs
in thread (my?) problem with re-blessed references(?)

Once any behavior is added, the simple use of can to test for attributes is no longer robust.

You're right and I thought about this a bit. If every package and ISA package has a %HAS (or HASA) hash containing valid attributes as keys, and defines a 'has' method, then its fairly simple to validate attributes in any package (and the attribute accessor/mutator methods could even be AUTOLOAD'ed if desired). The 'has' method would go something like this (untested):

sub has { my ($self, $attr) = @_; return 1 if exists $HAS{$attr}; return 1 if ${_}::has($self, $attr) for @ISA; return; } # Then in initialization or in AUTOLOAD... ... if ($self->has($attr)) { ...#set attr }
I'm not yet saying that this is a good idea, just throwing it out there for comments/opinions/better options.

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Re^2: Beware can for attrs
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Dec 14, 2002 at 19:11 UTC

    One problem with %HAS is that you have to duplicate the list of attributes.

    # type them once... my %field1; my %field2; my %HAS; # type them twice... {$HAS{$_}=1} foreach qw(field1 field2);

    As soon as you start typing field1, field2, etc. more than once you give yourself a problem when you change one and forget to change the other, etc.

    For example, a typo in %HAS will foul up your new() method without any warnings, etc... and we suddenly start having some of the effects that we switched to inside-out-objects to avoid ;-)

    There's also the fact that you don't want the user to fiddle with every attribute in your object.

    This leads to the more general point that I don't think that a totally generic object construction subroutine is practical. What ever method you pick is going to be inappropriate/annoy one or more groups of people.

    So - don't sweat it! Do something that works for the code that you're writing. Don't worry too much about the platonic one-true-new. There ain't no such beast :-)

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