in reply to Iterating over *any* thing in Perl

Object is nothing more than a blessed data structure, i.e. a hash or an arrary etc. (A hash of hash of hash is still a hash at each particular level, so we are dealing with no more than scalar, array/list and hash)

Basically, in order to be able to iterate over a data structure, you only need two things to support you:
  1. A way to determine what the data structure is, and this is not a big deal, as we have the isa function/method. Not just to recognize hash, array etc., you can actually even determine whether it is regexp, code, REF...

    Data Dumper is one of those kind of tools that can iterate over any given data structure. But it only does some pre-determined 'hard-coded' thing for you, for example, to dump the content of the data structure.

  2. A general purpose 'iterator' should allow the user to define call-back functions, so its functionality can be extended by the user. For example, those HTML, or XML parsers support call-back functions.

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Re: Re: Iterating over *any* thing in Perl
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Dec 03, 2002 at 08:53 UTC
    Just ignore, I don't play the semantics game well (you're right) 
    use anal::retentive;

    [download]
    Except that it's not. An object is nothing more than a blessed reference, not data structure. Observe: 
    my %foo = (1,2,3,4);
bless %boo,'bar';
__END__
Can't bless non-reference value at - line 2.

    [download]
    Now you know I like to quote ;) from perldoc -f bless 
    bless REF,CLASSNAME
bless REF
        This function tells the thingy referenced by REF that it is now
        an object in the CLASSNAME package. If CLASSNAME is omitted, the
        current package is used. Because a "bless" is often the last
        thing in a constructor, it returns the reference for
        convenience. Always use the two-argument version if the function
        doing the blessing might be inherited by a derived class. See
        the perltoot manpage and the perlobj manpage for more about the
        blessing (and blessings) of objects.

        Consider always blessing objects in CLASSNAMEs that are mixed
        case. Namespaces with all lowercase names are considered
        reserved for Perl pragmata. Builtin types have all uppercase
        names, so to prevent confusion, you may wish to avoid such
        package names as well. Make sure that CLASSNAME is a true value.

        See the section on "Perl Modules" in the perlmod manpage.
    update: hmm, it's a weird thing, the datastructure is "blessed", but only the reference knows, weird

    MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!
    ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

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