Generally, it's a mistake to map a C interface directly to a Perl one. With some careful thought, you can usually do much better by moulding the interface to Perl's strengths. An example that springs to mind is the Win32 Registry API: painful and tedious to use from C, with all those API calls, and all that mucking about checking return codes. By contrast, Win32::TieRegistry is a joy to use: to read from the Registry, you just read from a (tied) hash; to write to the Registry, you simply write to the hash.

As described in On Interfaces and APIs, the way to go about designing a new API is to "play test" it. Write some tests for it. Start by imagining the perfect interface without worrying about implementation constraints. Then refine it.

In reply to Re: Question about module interface style by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread Question about module interface style by Leviathan

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