I'm writing a subroutine to serve as both a package-function and as a method. My specific application is to use it for looking up records in a database. The method call would be used if I already have an object that needs to look itself up. The function call would be used to query the database, given a hash of values. The hash would be updated with the DB record, and could be used later in an object constructor.

Any feedback or other comments?

The code below works properly. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

package xpkg;

sub new {
    my $pkg = shift;         # What class are we constructing?
    my %info = @_;            # Allocate new memory
    bless(\%info, $classname);       # Mark it of the right type
    return \%info;                   # And give it back
} 

sub mproc {
    my ($ps) = shift;      # either pkg or self
    my ($pkg,$info);    # $info is a ref to hash
    if (ref $ps eq '') {    # it is a function call
        $pkg = $ps;
        $info = shift;
    } else {            # it is a method call
        $pkg = ref $ps;
        $info = $ps;
    }
    $info->{x} = 'y';
    print $pkg;
}


my $x1 = xpkg->new(a => 1);
$x1->mproc();        # call as method

xpkg->mproc({b => 2});    # call as function

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In reply to feedback on subroutine as both function and method in one by cpousset

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