I've recently been bitten by not being consistent. Before settling on one approach I'd appreciate the views of the monks.

For example, a new method calls a private init method. Should the init method return attributes? 

sub new {
  my ($class, $args) = @_;
  my $self = {};
  bless ($self, $class);
  my ($attr_1, $attr_2) = $self->my_init($args);
  $self->{attr_1} = $attr_1;
  $self->{attr_2} = $attr_2;
  return $self;
}

sub my_init {
  my ($self, $args) = @_;
  # do stuff with $args;
  my $attr_1 = 1;
  my $attr_2 = 2;
  return ($attr_1, $attr_2);
}

[download]
or just set them: 
sub new {
  my ($class, $args) = @_;
  my $self = {args => $args};
  bless ($self, $class);
  $self->my_init;
  return $self;
}

sub my_init {
  my ($self) = @_;
  my $args = $self->{args}
  # do stuff with $args
  $self->{attr_1} = $attr_1;
  $self->{attr_2} = $attr_2;
}

[download]
To my eye the latter looks neater but does the "action at a distance" make it less clear/maintainable than the former?

I'm using both approaches at the minute and I've met myself coming back. Are there better alternatives?

In reply to Passing object attributes around by wfsp

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