G'day jmmitc06,

The documentation for Class::Accessor::Faster only contains five short sentences in its DESCRIPTION. The fourth one says:

"Class::Accessor::Faster uses an array reference underneath to be faster."

Class::Accessor::Faster's source code has this constructor code:

sub new {
    my($proto, $fields) = @_;
    my($class) = ref $proto || $proto;
    my $self = bless [], $class;
    ...
[download]

You subclass Class::Accessor::Faster with Atom which has this constructor code:

sub new
  {
  my $proto = shift @_;
  my $self = { @atom_fields, @_ };
  $self = bless ($self, ref($proto) || $proto);
  ...
[download]

This is almost certainly the cause of the error.

Class::Accessor::Fast subclasses Class::Accessor (see Class::Accessor::Fast's source code). Class::Accessor's source code has this constructor code:

sub new {
    my($proto, $fields) = @_;
    my($class) = ref $proto || $proto;

    $fields = {} unless defined $fields;

    # make a copy of $fields.
    bless {%$fields}, $class;
}
[download]

So, if you wish to subclass Class::Accessor::Fast, you'll need a hashref-based object (which presumably worked for you initially); however, to subclass Class::Accessor::Faster, you'll need a arrayref-based object.