You can do that with AUTOLOAD, for example with: 
package MyAutoloadDemo;

use strict;
use warnings;
use Carp;

our $AUTOLOAD;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self  = {};
    $self->{'data'}->{'name'} = 'spiros';
    $self->{'data'}->{'address'} = 'london';
    bless $self, $class;
    return $self;
}

sub AUTOLOAD {
    my $self = shift;
    my $type = ref $self;

    my $name = $AUTOLOAD;
    $name =~ s/.*://;   # strip fully-qualified portion

    if (!exists $self->{data}->{$name} ) {
        croak "Can't access $name field in class $type";
    }

    return $self->{data}->{$name};   
 }

1;

[download]
use MyAutoloadDemo;

my $demo = MyAutoloadDemo->new();
warn $demo->name;
warn $demo->address;
warn $demo->unknown;

[download]
This prints: 
spiros at test.pl line 4.
london at test.pl line 5.
Can't access unknown field in class MyAutoloadDemo at test.pl line 6

[download]
But you probably want something from CPAN's Class:: namespace, eg. Class::MethodMaker, Class::Accessor, Class::Std, ..

In reply to Re: a simple matter of elegance by lima1
in thread a simple matter of elegance by spiros

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