Or-equals won't test the connection and it involves some redundant typing...

But if you have more than one potential data source (or if you like the visual effect ;) you can use it to wait and initialize the objects as needed.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

package Queries;

my ($db_handle, $ldap_connection);

sub data_query_one {
    $db_handle ||= new Sybase::DBlib();
    ...
}

sub data_query_two {
    $db_handle ||= new Sybase::DBlib();
    ...
}

sub ldap_query_one {
    $ldap_connection ||= new LDAP::Conn();
    ...
}

# &c.


sub clean_up {
    $ldap_connection->close     if $ldap_connection;
    $db_handle->release         if $db_handle;
}

1;
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