Using OOP doesn't actually require packages and bless()ing. It just means you have to do something in an object-oriented way :)

With that in mind, it depends on what you're using the information *for*. For example, if you only need to process the color information for everything at once, using $color{'car'} and $color{'bike'} make perfect sense.

On the other hand, if you needed to keep the different attributes of an item together (for example, for storage to a file on disk), you might prefer to do this:

$car = { wheels => 4, doors => 4, color => 'blue', trans => 'auto' };
$bike = { wheels => 2, color => 'red',  };
[download]

The reason for doing this is that, with all the attributes of an item in one hash, it's easy to pass that item around to whatever might need it. For example, you can pass it to Storable's freeze method and preserve your car in a disk file (for thawing by another script, or a later instance of your own). Or, you could pass a hash to a function that does something generic to whatever is passed in (like telling you if its turn signals automatically shut off; vehicles without steering wheels don't have that). This sort of design is at the heart of OO.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.