I guess I didn't make myself very clear in my last response -- when I say I'm writing a class generator, I mean that I'm designing a module with functionality similar to Class::MethodMaker. It is not a base class that I'm writing, but a module that generates class methods from "boilerplate" at run-time, thereby simplifying recurring issues that come up when writing OO Perl, like class-level and base-class-level data, attribute defaults, attribute accessors/mutators, etc. In practice, there will be no speed hit if the option to tie the class is not used, since no "tieing code" will be generated. I do want to leave the programmer the option to create such code; however, so I can simplify the process of writing such code as well.

Although you've now got me questioning whether there is any point in writing code to generate from "boilerplate" TIEHASH/FETCH/STORE routines when they will in probably just get overridden anyway. I definitely have to think in greater depth about what sort of generated code could even be useful in regards to the tie feature. Thanks for the insight.