tie and magic

pajout has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have such obsessive idea: It would be very nice for some reasons (conf files) to tie some variable as SCALAR, HASH and ARRAY simultaneously, to support following behavior:

my $xml; #that variable should have the triple magic
print $xml; 
#in scalar context, prints '<r><e1>t1</e1><e2></e2></r>'
print $xml[0][1];
#prints the second child of root, '<e2></e2>'
print $xml{r}{e1};
#prints '<e1>t1</e1>'
[download]

Is it possible to tie it in pure perl, without use xs and such perlguts? I think that read-only $xml variable could be very handy...

Edit: g0n - Added code tags

Comment on tie and magic Download Code

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Re: tie and magic by mirod (Canon) on Sep 21, 2005 at 10:45 UTC
I think XML::Smart works like this (except that the variable is not readonly). Updated:fixed the link	[reply]
Re^2: tie and magic by pajout (Curate) on Sep 21, 2005 at 12:57 UTC
Many thanks for the kick. I will play with Object::MultiType :)	[reply]
Re: tie and magic by dave_the_m (Monsignor) on Sep 21, 2005 at 12:23 UTC
ie some variable as SCALAR, HASH and ARRAY simultaneously This isn't possible, even using XS and perlguts. The perl lexer sees these as three separate variables: `$x # lexer returns $x $x[0] # lexer returns @x ... $x{0} # lexer returns %x ...` [download] of course, you could tie all three variables, but that's probably not what you want. Dave.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: tie and magic by pajout (Curate) on Sep 21, 2005 at 13:03 UTC
O.K., thanks, and what about $x, $x->[0] and $x->{str} ? I will read Object::MultiType, to use it or to steal some ideas.	[reply]
Re^3: tie and magic by dave_the_m (Monsignor) on Sep 21, 2005 at 14:08 UTC
what about $x, $x->[0] and $x->{str} Yes, that should work. Object::MultiType works by overloading object refs. Dave.	[reply]
Re: tie and magic by shady (Sexton) on Sep 21, 2005 at 11:37 UTC
Look at XML::Simple. It's very usefull for a config files.	[reply]
Re^2: tie and magic by pajout (Curate) on Sep 21, 2005 at 12:34 UTC
Thanks for your advice, but XML::Simple is not my cup of tea...	[reply]