An alternative viewpoint is that HTML::Template was written to accept a scalar or an arrayref and deal with these appropriately. By overloading your object (array) references to act as scalars in a scalar context, and then passing these to HTML::Template, you are creating the problem and asking for pre-existing code to fix it.

Couldn't you be the one to provide a separate function, $obj->toString(), and use that rather than overloading to pass the stringified value of your object to HTML::Template?

( Also, would $template->function( scalar $obj_to_stringify ); 'fix the problem'? ).

Note: I'm playing devil's advocate here because this is one of those issues about which I am undecided.

Not using ref, or context sensitivity in code seems like were throwing away a fundamental part of what makes perl, perl.

On the other hand, maybe the dwimery that makes writing small, procedural code in perl such a pleasure, is simply at odds with writing larger, more complicates app where OO comes into it's own?

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
Hooray!

In reply to Re: Why ref() is bad. by BrowserUk
in thread Is "ref $date eq 'ARRAY'" wrong? by bronto

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