That some people can do bad things doesn't convince me that I should give up using Data::Dumper on an object without creating an as_dumped_string method in every class.

That's a slightly tangential argument. Using Data::Dumper on an object implies an assumption that an object is its own data structure. That breaks down when the object is merely an index into external data structures, irrespective of whether those external data structures themselves can be dumped.

It's really a paradigm switch from OO programming (objects have behaviors) to imperative programming (functions have arguments) and that only works so long as there's a common practice to write objects that work both ways.

At least Storable has a (somewhat) sensible way of allowing objects to play nice with it. Data::Dumper does not, as I found out in Hooks like Storable for Dumper?.

-xdg

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In reply to Re^2: OO in Perl 5: still inadequate by xdg
in thread OO in Perl 5: still inadequate by Aristotle

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