If I'm understanding you correctly, you could also have $machine->open("foo.txt") return a tied filehandle. From perldoc perltie:

A class implementing a tied filehandle should define the following methods: TIEHANDLE, at least one of PRINT, PRINTF, WRITE, READLINE, GETC, READ, and possibly CLOSE, UNTIE and DESTROY. The class can also provide: BINMODE, OPEN, EOF, FILENO, SEEK, TELL - if the corresponding perl operators are used on the handle.

As I understand it, READLINE would be called for the diamond operator:

READLINE this

This method will be called when the handle is read from via <HANDLE>. The method should return undef when there is no more data.

In reply to Re: Inheritance and IO by almut
in thread Inheritance and IO by casiano

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