First, understand that Perl's OO support does not actually include the concept of instance variable. Perl does not provide, for instance, for data inheritance (though you can do it yourself). What we have instead are blessed references to certain primitive things: arrays, hashes, scalars, subroutines.

There are conventional ways to handle the problem of attaching data to a Perl object (a blessed reference to something). If you have a reference to an array, then an "instance variable" is merely one member of the array. If you have a reference to a hash, then you can make named instance variables using the hash's key/value pairs.

By the use of use fields, you get a pseudo-hash -- that is, an array with named slots.

So for a short answer, here are some constructors that show the conventional addition of "instance variables" (I am deliberately not minimizing the code to avoid confusion): 

package HashRefAsObject;

sub new1 { # using a hash ref as an object
 my $class = shift;
 my $self = { }; # hash ref
 bless( $self, $class );
 $self->{varA} = 123; # set "instvar"
 $self->{varB} = 456;  # another
 return $self;
}

package ArrayRefAsObject;

sub new2 {  # using an array ref as an object
 my $class = shift;
 my $self = []; # array ref
 bless( $self, $class );
 $self->[0] = 123; # set "instvar"
 $self->[1] = 456; # another
 return $self;
}

package Foo; # Using pseudo-hashes
# from fields manpage:
use fields qw(foo bar _Foo_private);
sub new {
 my Foo $self = shift;
 unless (ref $self) {
  $self = fields::new($self);
  $self->{_Foo_private} = "this is Foo's secret";
 }
 $self->{foo} = 10;
 $self->{bar} = 20;
 return $self;
}

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In reply to Re: Howto use hash instance vars? by bikeNomad
in thread Howto use hash instance vars? by Anonymous Monk

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