The fields pragma is a way of generating classes based on pseudohashes. As such it should give array access speed combined with hash-like flexibility. It also causes attribute names to be verified at compile time rather than run time, thus avoiding potential errors due to misspelling.

Since pseudohashes seem to have been a failed experiment the fields pragma may be the only way of guaranteeing this type of behaviour for future releases of perl.

--
John.

In reply to Re: use fields by jmcnamara
in thread use fields by tadman

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