The idea is to make something like the following happen: 
my $donut = Donut::Filled->new (Filling => "Cherry");
$donut->add (Topping => "Hawaiian");

print $donut; # Should be "Cherry filling with Hawaiian topping"
              # Is now "Donut::Filled=HASH(0xXXXXXXXX)"

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Now, writing the method to make the output text is simple enough, but getting it to execute is currently a mystery.

Of course, I could call a method, such as $donut->print(), or better yet, some sort of $donut->printed() method which would return the formatted string, but this seems so primitive. Maybe I'm just used to C++ iostreams, where this sort of stuff just happens when you use them in a stream context.

Why all the fuss over something so minor? It's really because I don't want to have to treat these variables any differently than the other regular scalars when it comes to output. This is for simplicity's sake:
print "Your order is for $count donuts which are specified with $donut<BR><BR>\n";
Versus, say, something like: 
print "Your order is for $count donuts which are specified with "
.$donut->printed()."<BR><BR>\n";

[download]
Any ideas?

In reply to Override Data Display Method by tadman

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