If I understand correctly, you want the object in the client code to become a different object when a particular method is called on it, correct? If this is want you want you can simply assign the new object to $_[0] in the method. See below:

#File Foo.pm
package Foo;

sub change_var
{
  $_[0] = 'Bar';
}

# File main.pl
use Foo;

my $var = 'Foo';
print "$var\n"; # prints "Foo"

Foo::change_var($var);

print "$var\n"; # prints "Bar"

[download]

In Perl the @_ array actually contains the arguments passed to the subroutine. Modifing @_ directly modifies the variable in the clients namespace. Does that make sense?

May the Force be with you

In reply to Re: An object replacing itself by JediWizard
in thread An object replacing itself by ryantate

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.