in reply to Death to auto-vivification

You may find Hash::Util or Readonly interesting. I haven't used either but I'm sure other monks could chime in on their pros and cons. A Super Search might point you in the right direction, too.

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Re^2: Death to auto-vivification
by doom (Deacon) on Mar 04, 2008 at 06:38 UTC
    I'm a fan of Hash::Util when working with hash-based objects, myself. I tend to use init routines that look like this (to make it impossible to accidentally create a hashkey that's not supposed to be there): 
    use Hash::Util qw( lock_keys unlock_keys );

sub init {
  my $self = shift;
  my $args = shift;
  unlock_keys( %{ $self } );

  my @attributes = qw(
                       something_or_other
                       another_something
                      );

  foreach my $field (@attributes) {
    $ATTRIBUTES{ $field } = 1;
    $self->{ $field } = $args->{ $field };
  }

  lock_keys( %{ $self } );
  return $self;
}

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