I'm sure I've asked this in the cb or on #perl before, but I don't remember the suggestions given to me, so I'll ask it here for posterity.

I have a suite of classes (Thingy, Thingy::Cog, Thingy::Handle, Thingy::Ramp, etc.) that can be inherited from so that their methods can be overridden. Thing is (no pun intended), Thingy objects need to generate Thingy::Cog objects. Therefore, when a class derives from Thingy (such as MyThingy) it should auto-generate inheriting classes with the same prefix (autovivifying MyThingy::Cog, MyThingy::Handle, etc.).

I'd rather not hard-code more than I have to in this case, unless a purely dynamic solution is disgusting to look at and code.

Update: I apologize if I was unclear. Here's a better explanation. A Thingy object produces a Thingy::Cog object. If I sub-class Thingy as MyThingy, I want the MyThingy object to attempt to create a MyThingy::Cog object instead of the hardcoded Thingy::Cog object. If MyThingy::Cog doesn't exist, then Thingy::Cog should be the class used.

What this means is that I have this code... 

package Thingy;

sub get_cog {
  my ($self) = @_;
  return Thingy::Cog->new;
}

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and I want to make it extensible when Thingy is subclassed (and Thingy::Cog is potentially subclassed). I could do 
sub get_cog {
  my (@self) = @_;
  return( (ref($self) . "::Cog")->new );
}

[download]
but that breaks if the person subclassing Thingy has not also subclassed Thingy::Cog.
Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

In reply to Inheritance in a Suite of Modules by japhy

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