they are essentially protected by virtue of the fact that you have to use the object

I would be careful about calling much in Perl protected. Sure, general politeness will keep most people from using the package in unintended ways, but Perl sure won't:

Module

package Example::Module;
use strict;
sub new { bless {}, shift }
sub foo {
  my ($s, $v1, $v2) = @_;
  print "Hi '$v1' and '$v2'\n";
}
1;

[download]

Script

use strict;
use Example::Module;

# add a new sub to the package
sub Example::Module::bar {
  my ($s, $v1, $v2) = @_;
  print "Bye '$v1' and '$v2'\n";
}

my $em = Example::Module->new;
$em->bar("one", "two");

# call the sub not as a method
Example::Module::foo('one', 'two', 'three');

# change the existing sub
*Example::Module::foo = sub {
  my ($s, $v1, $v2) = @_;
  print "Oops '$v1' and '$v2'\n";
};

$em->foo("one", "two");

[download]

In reply to Re^3: Writing Modules/namespace polution by Mugatu
in thread Writing Modules/namespace polution by thekestrel

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