I second stvn.

Since you know which fields are permitted when the class compiles you can generate them and get rid of AUTOLOAD. AUTOLOAD is really only needed when you do not know which methods the class will need to handle.

my @fields = qw/
  name
  age
  peers
/;

for my $name (@fields) {
  my $code = sub {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->{$name} = $_[0] if @_;
    return $self->{$name};
  };

  no strict 'refs';
  *$name = $code;
}
[download]

Now your class acts exactly like it would have acted if you manually wrote the methods, and you pay no run-time penalties.

Note how simple the logic of the code is compared to AUTOLOAD. And the AUTOLOAD implementation will get more complicated still. Consider what happens when you

• do $obj->can('age'),
• refactor and create a superclass that also uses AUTOLOAD, or
• use multiple inheritance where another class also uses AUTOLOAD.
• (Or forget to do return if $name eq 'DESTROY';.)

A proper implementation of AUTOLOAD requires an awful lot of thinking, and still it does not buy you anything, rather the opposite, if you already know the method names.

lodin