If you think that Perl has not a most generic approach to objects, you'd probably haven't looked into the "huh, this is possible?" corner enough. Take a look at this:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;

# Turn a scalar into a blessed object
my $foo = 'THIS IS A SCALAR';
my $bar = [qw(THIS IS AN ARRAY)];
my $baz = {'This' => 'Is', 'A' => 'Hash'};

my $scalarobject = bless \$foo, 'This::Is::A::Dummy::Object';
my $arrayobject = bless $bar, 'This::Is::A::Dummy::Object';
my $hashobject = bless $baz, 'This::Is::A::Dummy::Object';

{
    # Force the This::Is::A::Dummy::Object class to have a print metho
+d that stringifies itself ;-)
    no strict 'refs';
    *{'This::Is::A::Dummy::Object::stringify'} = sub{ my ($self) = @_;
+ print Dumper($self); };
}

$scalarobject->stringify();
$arrayobject->stringify();
$hashobject->stringify();
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This blesses a scalar, an array and a hash with a class that we didn't even create beforehand. AFTER it does that, it modifies the class and adds a "stringify" method, which in turn modifies all the objects of that class. Then we stringify all objects with this newly created method. Result:

$VAR1 = bless( do{\(my $o = 'THIS IS A SCALAR')}, 'This::Is::A::Dummy:
+:Object' );
$VAR1 = bless( [
                 'THIS',
                 'IS',
                 'AN',
                 'ARRAY'
               ], 'This::Is::A::Dummy::Object' );
$VAR1 = bless( {
                 'A' => 'Hash',
                 'This' => 'Is'
               }, 'This::Is::A::Dummy::Object' );
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If that is not generic and flexible, i don't know what is.

SCNR