Object Swaps

billyak has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm sure there is a more accurate name for what I am trying to do, so this title will have to do. More or less, I've got a package that I am storing the state using Data::Dumper and loading it back in with eval. You're probably already starting to cringe ;-)

Here is a short, simplified snippet that displays what I've got so far and what I need to know how to fix. It will probably only be one line. (This is just a brief overview of what I'm trying to do; the real code is running with strict, etc.)

my $test = Test->new(123);
$test->change(345);
print $test->{id}; # Should print 345

package Test;
sub new {
    bless{
        id=>$_[1],
    }
}

sub change {
    my($self,$id) = @_;
    my $t2 = Test->new($id);
    $self = $t2; # This line is broke
}
[download]

Any ideas on how to obtain the desired effect? On a side note, is storing states with Data::Dumper so terrible that I should do something else?

Thanks,
-billyak

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Re: Object Swaps by japhy (Canon) on Jan 14, 2002 at 04:31 UTC
You'll want to assign directly to `$_[0]`. `sub change { my ($self, $id) = @_; $_[0] = Test->new($id); }` [download] _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker. `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Object Swaps by gav^ (Curate) on Jan 14, 2002 at 04:50 UTC
Personally I prefer using Storable rather than Data::Dumper/Eval. It is both faster and safer. Some good information about Perl OO Persistence can be found here. gav^	[reply]