Instead of adding your metadata into the socket, I suggest your $self be a CONTAINER class, and :

$self->{SOCKET} = $class->SUPER::new( blah blah );
$self->{OTHER_ATT} = "Whatever";
[download]

Wow, thanks for that tip about inside out objects, I had not heard of that before but love the idea! My first attempt did not quite solve the problem:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings FATAL => qw(all);

{ package test;

use IO::Socket::INET;

our @ISA = ('IO::Socket::INET');

my %field;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;

    my $self = bless \do { 
        new IO::Socket::INET(
            PeerAddr => '127.0.0.1:80',
            Proto => 'tcp',
            Blocking => 0
        );
    }, $class;

    $field{$self} = shift;

    return $self;
}

sub getField {
    my $self = shift;
    return $field{$self};
}

sub DESTROY {
    my $self = shift;
    delete $field{$self};
    $self->SUPER::DESTROY();
    print STDERR "Bye!\n";
}

1; }

my $obj = test->new('okay');
print $obj->getField."\n";
print $obj->sockhost."\n";
[download]

Result:

root~/perl»./test1.pl 
okay
Not a GLOB reference at /usr/lib64/perl5/5.14.2/x86_64-linux-thread-mu
+lti/IO/Socket.pm line 246.
Bye!
[download]

Note that changing the last line to $$obj->sockhost will make it work, but I'd prefer this be a normal subclass. So tweaking the inside-out constructor a bit, since IO::Socket::new() returns a glob ref to start with:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings FATAL => qw(all);

{ package test;

use IO::Socket::INET;

our @ISA = ('IO::Socket::INET');

my %field;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = $class->SUPER::new (
        PeerAddr => '127.0.0.1:80',
        Proto => 'tcp',
        Blocking => 0
    );
    $field{$self} = pop;
    return $self;
}

sub getField {
    my $self = shift;
    return $field{$self};
}

sub DESTROY {
    my $self = shift;
    delete $field{$self};
    $self->SUPER::DESTROY();
    print STDERR "Bye!\n";
}

1; }

my $obj = test->new("okay");
print $obj->getField."\n";
print $obj->sockhost."\n";

my $two = test->new("two");
print $two->getField."\n";
[download]

Bingo:

root~/perl»./test2.pl 
okay
127.0.0.1
two
Bye!
Bye!
[download]

Thanks much. Besides making this possible (and guaranteeing I won't get into namespace entanglements with superclass members), I really like the idea of genuine encapsulation in perl. Etc. "Inside out". That is freaking brilliant. Somebody deserves a prize for that one.

Besides making this possible (and guaranteeing I won't get into namespace entanglements with superclass members), I really like the idea of genuine encapsulation in perl. Etc. "Inside out". That is freaking brilliant. Somebody deserves a prize for that one.

On behalf of the many people who have worked on refining the idea of inside-out classes, we're extremely glad you're so pleased. And, yes, we actually did get a prize: the ability to do clean encapsulated OO in Perl. ;-)

BTW, if you like the idea of inside-out objects, you're going to love the framework we've build to make them easier to use: Object::InsideOut. Using that framework, your above solution could be written like this:

    { package test;

        use Object::InsideOut;
        use IO::Socket::INET;

        my @socket :Field Handles(IO::Socket::INET)
                   :Default( _make_socket() );

        my @field  :Field Arg(field) Get(getField);

        sub _make_socket :Private {
            return IO::Socket::INET->new(
                      PeerAddr => '127.0.0.1:80', 
                      Proto    => 'tcp', 
                      Blocking => 0
                   );
        }

        sub _cleanup :Destroy {
            my $self = shift;
            print STDERR "Bye from $field[$$self]!\n";
        }

    }

    my $obj = test->new(field => "okay");
    print $obj->getField."\n";           
    print $obj->sockhost."\n";           
                                         
    my $two = test->new(field => "two"); 
    print $two->getField."\n";
[download]

I would encourage you to take a look at the module. It may quite literally turn your world inside-out.

Damian

FWIW, I don't think you're supposed to inherit from IO::Socket anymore, just dispatch , see "Redispatching Methods in AUTOLOAD()" in the free Modern Perl book), a loose description of how experienced and effective Perl 5 programmers work....You can learn this too.