Re^3: replace object methods at runtime

Sure ,

Thank you for indulging me. I've seen this kind of facility requested (or described in other languages), but I've never really seen a non-hypothetical use-case for it. And I'm always more interested in real use cases than hypothetical ones.

That said, without fully understanding the architecture you are describing, it sounds like a complex way of coding a simple boolean condition? Essentially:

sub method {
    my( $self, @args ) = @_;
    ...
    if( $self->_pipeExistsAndIsGood ) {
        ## communicate with pipe
    }
    else {
        ## $self->_forkAndStorePipe();
    }
}
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I can see that 'dynamic method rewriting' is a way to avoid a boolean test, which might provide a small efficiency gain, but trading that for the complexity and 'action at a distance' involved runtime determination of the code behind a method, along with parent & child time forked instances, just seems like a recipe for complex and difficult to trace bugs and failures.

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Re^4: replace object methods at runtime by karavelov (Monk) on Jun 25, 2008 at 17:53 UTC
Yes, the "boolean test" method is more simple and maintainable. As a performance it is equal or better to the approach with wrappers/AUTOLOAD because you always must check some condition in the wrapper. I see that if we have symtables per instance this will hurt the performance of all objects and the gain in flexibility is minimal. The suggested re-blessing method seems more general and could do the same without penalty for other objects. Thanks luben	[reply]

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Re^4: replace object methods at runtime
by karavelov (Monk) on Jun 25, 2008 at 17:53 UTC

Yes, the "boolean test" method is more simple and maintainable. As a performance it is equal or better to the approach with wrappers/AUTOLOAD because you always must check some condition in the wrapper.

I see that if we have symtables per instance this will hurt the performance of all objects and the gain in flexibility is minimal. The suggested re-blessing method seems more general and could do the same without penalty for other objects.

Thanks
luben

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