Eh well, it seems that I shouldn't have mentioned the word 'class' at all, because the problem I'm trying to solve has little to do with classes: I've implemented a very simple two-dimensional regex engine, which can now be called with the ugly syntax

match2('\v1(\h2(\v3(\h4)))', ['13', '24'])

but I want it to look like

['13','24'] =~ m2/\v1(\h2(\v3(\h4)))/

sure I could wait until 5.10 and the use feature ~~ but I'd rather overload =~ now.