python ( and some other languages ) can do some crazy stuff where a simple string variable is a class other than a string. ie, $email is an Email class object, when set it can only hold an email or toss an error. when you call print, or do any sort of string operation to it, it behaves like a string because of a representation function

i kind of really need something like that in perl - in one webapp, I'm regexing a single variable to see if it's a url/email 15x , tossing it through various functions that are different from one another. i'd love to replace the tests with a simple class check, and just change the instantiation to use a class instead of a string.

I've been through all my perl books , the pod, and perlmonks, but I can't seem to find anyone doing behavior like this. does anyone have a clue? can this even be done?

In reply to variables as classes by nmerriweather

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