I see. Basically, what you want is "use class IO::Socket::Socks, but not quite." - though one.

You could potentially get lucky with Class::Prototyped, see Randal's article in Linux-Magazine.

update: code snippet retracted

... or how about this:

package IO::Socket::SecureSocks;

use strict;
use warnings;

use IO::Socket::Socks;
use IO::Socket::SSL;

sub new {
    my $self = IO::Socket::SSL->new(@_);
    bless $self, "IO::Socket::Socks";
}

1;
[download]

This creates a IO::Socket::SSL object, and then reblesses it into the IO::Socket::Socks class. It assumes that you know that IO::Socket::Socks inherits the constructor from its base class, so it's still somewhat kludgy :).

--saintmike