OK, so this may not be a "killer app", but one feature of autoboxing can be really a time-saver: methods on undef

I like chaining methods, and often I am only interested in the result of the whole chain. For example when navigating an XML document: $elt->first_child->text or $doc->root->last_child( 'section')->first_child( 'title')->att( 'num'). If one of the calls fails, than I am happy with undef being returned. I just don't like having to test every single method call. Which is often what I have to do, or the program dies when it tries calling a method on undef.

None of the possible alternatives seems to be as convenient as autoboxing undef, the closest in convenience, but I would guess at a higher performance price, being by returning a pre-defined object instead of undef in case of failure and overloading the boolean-ification of the object.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Autoboxing: Yes or No? by mirod
in thread Autoboxing: Yes or No? by Ovid

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.