The advantage of autoboxing, is not to make this easier:

my $error = 3.1415927->minus( 22->divide( 7 ) )->abs();

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But rather, if I write a function that deals with $href entirely though method calls rather than the built-in keywords, and document that I have done so, then somebody calling that function is now able to pass it, instead of a hashref, a blessed object providing the same interface; i.e. polymorphism.

This can be achieved somewhat using tied variables, but the interface is very low-level - it's not easy to, say, quickly override the order a foreach loop will traverse an array.

Besides which, in the former example you are hideously breaking encapsulation by using the assignment operator! ;-)

(my $error)->set_value( 3.1415927->minus( 22->divide( 7 ) )->abs() );

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use Moops; class Cow :rw { has name => (default => 'Ermintrude') }; say Cow->new->name

In reply to Re^6: use feature 'postderef'; # Postfix Dereference Syntax is coming in 5.20 by tobyink
in thread use feature 'postderef'; # Postfix Dereference Syntax is coming in 5.20 by Anonymous Monk

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