Definition of Constructor:

The constructor is a member function of a class. It is invoked every time an object is created. ...

Surely none of the examples I gave that you call "constructors" are invoked if a new object is created. They are called, and just happen to return an object (which may, or may not, be constructed using 'bless'). Consider the following function: 

    sub foo {
        rand (2) < 1 ? 0 : bless [] => "foo"
    }

[download]
Would that be a Schr\"odinger cat constructor?
By that definition, your Gonbagger methods one(), two(), and three() are all constructors, as is the lioger1 method from the second example. Gonbagger::four() is not a constructor because it doesn't construct anything. Neither is the lioger2() method.
But the client code doesn't know what's going on under the hood, and to quote you:
The fact that, under the hood, it calls bless is completely irrelevant to the client code. 
package Foo;

sub new { bless [], $_[0] }
sub confuse { bless $_[0], 'ARRAY' }

[download]
Surely, you're not going to tell me that confuse() is using bless as a constructor?!?
Of course it is. It's making a new instance of the class "ARRAY". You might quibble that $_ [0] might already be an instance of the class 'ARRAY' and therefore it's not constructing a new object, but that's as useful as arguing that $x = 17; isn't an assignment if the value of $x happens to be 17.

Abigail

In reply to Re: Leaving a constructor midway? by Abigail-II
in thread OO: Leaving a constructor midway? by jest

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.