Of course there is always more than one way to do things. If I were to implement an array of which I always mantained a statistical average of the values of its elements, I might consider tieing the array to a module that overloads the STORE function (and all other applicable to the situation) so that any time a new value is added by any means, the statistical average attribute is updated.

The attributes could then be obtained via access to the object's methods. ...perhaps a "getstat()" method which would return a reference to a hash of stats.

Such an approach would guarantee that the stats are always accurate, as there would be essentially no way to modify the array without the stats being recalculated. Performance would suffer a bit, but accuracy would be guaranteed. By using a tied array, the user could do whatever the hell he wants, directly to the array, and an accurate stat. would still be maintained.

:) Just a thought. And of course, it came to me because I've been playing with tied variables the past few days. Seems like a cool solution though.


Dave

In reply to Re: Re: Re: multi-tier collections & lack of modulization/OO by davido
in thread multi-tier collections & lack of modulization/OO by pg

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.