Howdy!

...but writing Packet_Foreign->new means that I have a priori knowledge that I always need a Packet_Foreign thingy. That is not the situation in the scenario at hand.

In the scenario under consideration, one is handed an object and needs another of the same class. Either one takes ref($obj) before calling new or one does it *in* new. The scenario does not admit a choice. One *could* pass the value to new as an argument, but that is just another variation (that may be productive) that I'm going to gloss over for now.

The code obscures the author's intent. Could he have written Obj->new but didn't just because of mindless imitation? Could he have written (ref $obj)->new but didn't just because of mindless imitation?

I give you rir's observation: When the code is bad, the documentation is worse. So I find your statements to rely on the documentation unconvincing. If truth and beauty don't exist in the code, I won't count on finding them in the documentation.

It is not reasonable to attribute use of the offending idiom to "mindless imitation". That steers the discourse toward a discussion of the discussor and away from the subject. The followup observation continues that unpleasant course.

I do not blindly accept that the idiom is, per se, a Bad Thing(tm). I do accept that it has the potential to create confusion. I do claim that proper documentation and the use of it by the programmer should mitigate that confusion. It is not that you are "unable to make your point to [me]"; it is that I do not blindly accept it as the One Truth.

More generally, what do you expect to happen if you call a class method as an object method? As developer of the module? As user of the module?

I see this whole issue as having a number of shades of gray, not just black and white.

yours,
Michael

In reply to Re: (Re:)+ $class = ref $class || $class by herveus
in thread Constructor/Factory Orthodoxy by mojotoad

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