Class::Accessor::Lvalue also allows you to create them for a class and it has the nice feature that a call to $a->wibble = 5 gets translated to $a->set_wibble(5) so all your usual verification code is still callable (or you can choose to autogenerate a plain old setter with Class::Accessor).

In my own code I use my own method maker module (not on CPAN because there are already enough method makers on CPAN) that does something similar but slightly unusual. Doing 

package Foo;
use Fergal::MM qw( Bar );

[download]
will create a setBar and getBar pair of methods and also a Bar lvalue method which just calls setBar and getBar. So far, so normal. What's unusual is that it puts the methods into Foo::Methods and makes Foo inherit from Foo::Methods so that if I want to have something special (validation etc) happen when a setter or getter is called. I just do 
package Foo;
use Fergal::MM qw( Bar );

sub setBar
{
  my $self = shift;
  my $value = shift;
  check($value);
  $self->SUPER::setBar($value);
}

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Yes, there's plenty of overhead in this but usually it doen't make any difference to me.

Another interesting thing I do with lvalue accessors is to add indexed accessors. So I can do something like 

$a->Grid(2, 3) = $player1;
$a->Grid(7, 5) = $player2;

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this gets translated into 
$a->setGrid($player1, 2, 3);
$a->setGrid($player2, 7, 5);

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so by writing the correct setters and getters, you can create attributes that act like multidimensional arrays or hashes and that are also overrideable by sub classes and can have validation etc.

In reply to Re^3: Are lvalue methods (as properties) a good idea? by fergal
in thread Are lvalue methods (as properties) a good idea? by jplindstrom

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