You've just described what jdhedden dubbed "foreign inheritance". Both Class::InsideOut and Object::InsideOut already support this, though in slightly different ways. The former offers it directly; the latter uses a delegation pattern for a more generalized approach. Docs for both give examples. And neither uses tie.

I've written File::Marker to go along with the inside-out tutorial I'm giving next week at Perl Seminar NY. It gives a very simple example of using the inside-out technique to extend IO::File.

Here's a couple threads on the topic as well

-xdg

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In reply to Re: RFC: Class::Moebius by xdg
in thread RFC: Class::Moebius by rinceWind

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