In short: no, not exactly.. :o) I'll try to explain my grasp of the concepts as best as I can..

First of all, OOP is not *only* about reuse. Reuse is a good side effect of using objects, but there are other good effects too..

If you're doing a particular job over and over again, the first place I'd look is to move that code into a sub (subroutine)... Saves overhead, avoids duplicating code all over the place..

OOP deals more with concepts of modularization and abstraction.. Firstly, take the following example:
You have a function which maintains a bank balance. If all you need to do is subtract and/or add amounts from the bank balance, two simple functions named "add_to_account" and "subtract_from_account" would be fine... Pass in the balance, and the amount to add or subtract, and you get a result...However, suppose you also want to maintain the state of the bank balance inside the function ? if you don't want to maintain the balance in your application, then an OOP system is good...

Objects can help you maintain state... to follow the same example: 

The procedural method:
$balance = add_to_acct($balance, $amount);

The OOP method:
my $acct_obj = new BankAccount($initial_balance);
$acct_obj->add_to_acct($amount);

[download]

In other words, what's happened here is that the explicit maintenance of a bank balance has been abstracted away from you.. The object maintains the state of the bank balance... Think of an object as a neat little package which contains all the variables and function calls you need to do a particular job..

As I understand your problem, if you just need to open a file frequently, then an OOP interface is probably overkill.. for your second question, if you want something like this: 

add_value($x);
add_value($y);
add_value($z);
my @all_values = get_all_values;

[download]
then an object oriented interface looks nicer, but isn't really necessary... you could write it procedurally as: 
@all_values = add_value($x, @all_values); 
# gives the list to add to, and takes the newly added list # as a retu
+rn value
@all_values = add_value($y, @all_values); 
...
# Now anytime you inspect @all_values, it has the currently # added el
+ements.

[download]

Most of this is probably oversimplified.. a look at perltoot,perlsub or searching for object oriented tutorials will probably explain things better...

HTH

In reply to Re: Modular Code by tinman
in thread Modular Code by Stamp_Guy

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