Does perl have any "object swizzling" capability - i.e. like Smalltalk's become: method? 
  my $x = bless {}, SomeClass;
  my $y = $x;

  say ref($y); # prints 'SomeClass';

  my $z = bless {}, SomeOtherClass;
  ...do some magic so that $x 'becomes' $z...

  # note this also changes $y:
  say ref($y); # prints 'SomeOtherClass'

[download]

The question arose when I was thinking of implementations of lazy-loading. Have a proxy object stand in for the lazily-loaded object, and the proxy will load the real object only when it really is needed. Instead of having the proxy forward method calls to the real object, it would be nice to have the the proxy 'become' the real object.

In reply to object swizzling? by perl5ever

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.