Oh, the joys of lvalue! 
    package Object;

    use vars '$AUTOLOAD';

    # :

    sub AUTOLOAD : lvalue
    {
            my ($self) = shift;

            $AUTOLOAD =~ s/.*://;

            @_? $self->{$AUTOLOAD} = shift : $self->{$AUTOLOAD} ||= undef;
    }
Sweet candy. Now you can do stuff like this: 
     my ($object) = new Object;

     $object->whatever = "Data";
     print "Whatever is '",$object->whatever,"'\n";
It "goes both ways" as an LVALUE, and this AUTOLOAD routine has backwards compatibility with the older, somesay wacky function method: 
     my ($object) = new Object;

     $object->whatever("Data");
     print "Whatever is '",$object->whatever(),"'\n";
You even get warnings with perl -w if you use uninitialized members.

In reply to Re^2: Uses for an lvalue subroutine by tadman
in thread Uses for an lvalue subroutine by bent

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