G'day Monks!

I have an object that has a lot of configuration options that I set using accessors: 

my $obj = My::Class->new();
$obj->foo("foo");
$obj->bar("bar");

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Then I figured out that if I return $self from each accessor I can chain my method calls: 
my $obj = My::Class->new()->foo("foo")->bar("bar");

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This is all fine and dandy until I actually want to know what $obj->foo is set to: 
my $foo = $obj->foo; # Wrong! Just gets a copy of $obj.

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Is there any way I can detect that I'm using the method in a chain and return the object or that I'm using it as an accessor and return the value?

I found this which seems to be a generic way of doing what I want but I can't decipher the magic contained in there.

I know Best Practices™ say that I should have separate setter and getter methods and I suspect that's the way I will have to go but having a single method that does both is just so darn elegant!

Any ideas?

In reply to Method Chaining and Accessors by linenoise

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