I follow you and thanks for your reply. I'm not sure how to go about reblessing the object though.

As i see it i could:

• Have the constructor call the method to determine the class, and immediately rebless the object as some other class. The problem i see here is that now the parent class has to have knowledge of it's child classes which i think breaks inheritance?
• Or i could interrogate the type in the main script and create a clone of a different (sub)class. This seems inefficient to me and it seems like i'm bringing the code out of the classes and into the main script.

Am i needlessly overcomplicating things?

I found this code: Stack Overflow But to be honest i'm having real trouble following what the user is doing here!

I imagined the second solution:

my $obj = 'Parent'->new;
$obj->populate(@data);
for my $child_class (@possible_child_classes) {
    if (my $new = $child_class->new_from_parent($obj)) {
        $obj = $new;
        last
    }
}
# Don't forget to handle the case that $obj hasn't changed.
[download]

In fact, the only problem why this shouldn't go to the parent class is the array of possible child classes. So, get it from outside; the parent can insist on its children implementing a method:

sub new_from_parent { die "Should be overriden.\n" }

sub rebless {
    my $self = shift;
    my @possible_child_classes = @_;
    for my $child_class (@possible_child_classes) {
        # etc. using $self instead of $obj.
[download]

And the code becomes

my $obj = 'Parent'->new;
$obj->populate(@data);
$obj->rebless(@possible_child_classes);
[download]

لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ

The problem i see here is that now the parent class has to have knowledge of it's child classes which i think breaks inheritance?

As Salvor Hardin used to say, never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!