As much as I'm a fan of tie, for this kind of operation it seems to Benchmark abysmally slow, and, additionally, requires a lot of extra effort to impose on a particular scalar. Consider that within an object there may be dozens of variables, each of which would have to be tied independently. Using a single AUTOLOAD lvalue subroutine you could take care of them all, on-demand.

overload came to mind too, but the assignment ('=') override is a hack at best, though to the credit of the implementor, this is because of Force Majeure, and not lack of initiative or inventiveness.