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

What I would like to do is be able to pass either a hash or a hash reference to my object method. And regardless of what is passed I would like it to end up as a hash reference. I searched here and damian's OOPerl book (which I'm not very far through) but couldn't find an example. I'm sure this is just a simple question (possibly redundant) but I cant figure it out and it's late at night.

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Re: OO sub, hash or hash reference.
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Feb 18, 2002 at 15:07 UTC
    There's a few ways you could do it. I'd do it as such: 
    sub someMethod {
    my $self = shift;

    my $hashRef;
    if (UNIVERSAL::isa($_[0], 'HASH')) {
        $hashRef = shift;
    } else {
        $hashRef = { @_ };
    }
}

    [download]
    Of course, you can add more checks and lots of cool stuff. But, that's basically the idea.

    ------
    We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

    Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Out of curiosity, why the isa instead of a ref($_[0]) eq 'HASH'?

      -pete
      Entropy is not what is used to be.
[reply]
[d/l]
        after seeing the above code I did some reading:

        "The reason the original test is fragile ( ref($_[0]) eq 'HASH' ) is that it will make your code refuse to work on a hash if it happens to be blessed."

        It was simpler than I thought.
[reply]
Re: OO sub, hash or hash reference.
by dash2 (Hermit) on Feb 18, 2002 at 16:57 UTC
    Assuming you aren't too bothered about blessed references, how about this? 
    sub xxx {
        my $class = shift;
        my $args = ($#_ == 0) ? { %{ (shift) } } : { @_ };

    [download]

    NB: not my own work.

    dave hj~

[reply]
[d/l]

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