• Log::Agent
  The module provides an abstract layer for logging and tracing.
  
  
• Log::Channel
  Allows for code to specify channels for delivery of logging messages, and for users of the code to control the delivery and formatting of the messages.
  
  
• Log::Simple
  This is a basic run-time logger. My favourite ;).

sub new {
    my $class_name = shift;
    my $self = {};    
    $self->{output_file} = shift;    
    $self->{append} = shift;
    $self->{file_handle} = undef ;
    
    
        bless ($self,$class_name);
        # bless ($self);     # AHA! How could I have missed that one! 
+Thanks go to [bronto] for pointing that out. No need to bless the thi
+ng twice.. one time is enough already! ;>
        return $self;     
}
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sub start {
   my $self = shift; # Get 'reference' to the class instance (aka obje
+ct)!

  # use this reference to retrieve object specific attributes!
  open($self->{filehandle}, " . . . ");
  #  .  . . Rest of your code . . .
}
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# Under Construction
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I subscribe the advice of using CPAN modules and of putting the filehandle inside the object, but I don't see the need to bless $self twice, an error that you inherited from vladb's code

Update: s/[vladb]/[postman]/

Sorry, wrong target ;-)

Ciao!
--bronto

# Another Perl edition of a song:
# The End, by The Beatles
END {
  $you->take($love) eq $you->made($love) ;
}

Some pointers:

use strict; would have kicked your ass :-)

Your constructor should be something like:

use Symbol;

sub new {
    my $class_name = shift;
    $classname = ref($classname) || $classname;
    my $self = {
       "output_file" => shift,
       "append"      => shift,
       "file_handle" => gensym(),
    }
    bless ($self,$class_name);
    return $self;     
}
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use Symbol; and gensym() are put in here for backward compatibility to perls before 5.6 - see the Symbol manpage

And methods should be called and constructed like:

     $object->method($arg1,$arg2);

     sub method {
          my $self = shift;
          my $arg1 = shift;
          my $arg2 = shift;
          print "append is ",$self->{"append"},"\n";
          $self->other_method($arg2);
     }
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Take a look at perldoc perltoot and/or get your hands on the 'programming perl' book

Update: changed $append and friends to "append" - that should actually work :-)

also added some code to show the retrieval of object data.

-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.
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Many thanks to you ... and the others who replied so quickly, for pointing out the error of my ways which stems in part I think from trying to write Java in Perl. I could just use a cpan module, but I had the feeling that I was misunderstanding something fundamental that I needed to sort out. Next on my list is to re-read perltoot. Meanwhile ... one more question if I may, I'm trying to

print $self->{file_handle} "some text \n" ;
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which is wrong, but can't figure out what it should be. Thanks again

On top of my OO confusion, I was getting led further astray by my overlooking the global nature of filehandles, and my mistaken way of trying to store them in a hash. Got there in the end ... by storing a reference to the file handle in a hash

use FileHandle;
my $FH = FileHandle->new(">>$self->{output_file}");
$self->{file_handle} = \$FH;
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and used in other methods like this

my $FH = ${$self->{file_handle}};    
print $FH "some text\n" ;
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Thanks again for all the pointers.