I understand what you're saying and appreciate the comment. There is something you may be overlooking, though. I would like the user to have the choice of either calling new then obscure, or just going straight to Business::CreditCard::Obscure->obscure(). That's why I have the extra goodies inside that method. The constructor stuff in the new method was mostly just for user convenience to suit their preferred coding style. I'm aiming for maximum effective flexibility.