Hi Monks, I am facing a weird problem due to unexpected behaviour of Perl OO ( I'm talking about mine expectations :P ) Please have a look at this test script :

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Sortkeys = 1;

my $object   = bless {}, "MyMain";
$object->{a} = bless {}, "A";
$object->{b} = bless {}, "B";
$object->{c} = bless {}, "C";

$object->{a}->{var1} = "Pratik";
$object->{a}->{var2} = bless {}, "A1";
$object->{a}->{var2}->{name} = "Hello";

$object->{b}->{var1} = $object->{a}->{var2};

$object->{c}->{var1} = $object->{a}->{var2};

print Dumper($object);

#
# Start the magic.
#

my $dummy = bless {}, "A1";
$dummy->{name} = "CamelNeedsWater";

$object->{a}->{var2} = $dummy;

print Dumper($object);
[download]

It generates output as :

$VAR1 = bless( {
                 'a' => bless( {
                                 'var1' => 'Pratik',
                                 'var2' => bless( {
                                                    'name' => 'Hello'
                                                  }, 'A1' )
                               }, 'A' ),
                 'b' => bless( {
                                 'var1' => $VAR1->{'a'}{'var2'}
                               }, 'B' ),
                 'c' => bless( {
                                 'var1' => $VAR1->{'a'}{'var2'}
                               }, 'C' )
               }, 'MyMain' );
$VAR1 = bless( {
                 'a' => bless( {
                                 'var1' => 'Pratik',
                                 'var2' => bless( {
                                                    'name' => 'CamelNe
+edsWater'
                                                  }, 'A1' )
                               }, 'A' ),
                 'b' => bless( {
                                 'var1' => bless( {
                                                    'name' => 'Hello'
                                                  }, 'A1' )
                               }, 'B' ),
                 'c' => bless( {
                                 'var1' => $VAR1->{'b'}{'var1'}
                               }, 'C' )
               }, 'MyMain' );
[download]

Problem here is, assignments are behaving like COW, where as I'd expect them to behave like reference.

In my code, when I do $object->{a}->{var2} = $dummy;, I'd want $object->{b}->{var1} & $object->{c}->{var1} to still point to $object->{a}->{var2}, instead of getting it's own copy of old values.

Any inputs or work arounds ?

Thanks.

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