Re: Re: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class

I'm not sure I like this polymorhic method-naming stuff that'll be happening in the background. Perl is weakly-typed, so why do a work-around that strongly-typed languages have to do? Instead, why not do the following?

sub new {
    my ($class, $name, $rank, $c_num) = @_;
    $name ||= '';
    $rank ||= '';
    $c_num ||= '';

    bless { name => '',
            rank => '',
            cereal_number => '',
          }, $class;
}
[download]

That, to me, just feels cleaner and is more maintainable. If you make a change in new(), you only have to change it in one place. Especially if it's in a base class. If it's in a base class and you only change one, you suddenly have weird behavior in the grandchild classes and debugging it would take an age-and-a-half. *shudders*

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Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Comment on Re: Re: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class Download Code

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Re: Re: Re: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class by TheDamian (Vicar) on Sep 28, 2001 at 11:06 UTC
Careful with that `\|\|=`, Eugene! Did you really want to prohibit a cereal number of zero? That's why I generally avoid using `\|\|=` to specify defaults. Unless I'm very sure my incoming data won't ever be 0, "0", or "". Besides, there are ways to tell if she is a witch: `$name = '' unless defined $name; $rank = '' unless defined $rank; $c_num = '' unless defined $c_num;` [download] or: `foreach ($name, $rank, $c_num) { defined or $_ = '' }` [download] or the strange-but-lovely: `$_ = '' for grep !defined => ($name, $rank, $c_num);` [download] or the tried and true: `$name = '' if weight($name) == weight($duck); $rank = '' if weight($rank) == weight($duck); $c_num = '' if weight($c_num) == weight($duck);` [download] Err... Oh, yes, I should also mention that next week, when Apocalypse III and Exegesis III appear, you'll find that Perl 6 is going to have a much nicer way to solve this problem. Damian	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Re: Re: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class by blakem (Monsignor) on Sep 28, 2001 at 11:20 UTC
Perl 6 is going to have a much nicer way to solve this problem. I like the sound of that... last I heard there was some strong opposition to an `\|\|=` that tests for definedness rather than truthfulness. I've always been on the side of having such a construct, especially since `\|\|=` is so tempting for newbies to use, even after they've been told of the pitfalls. The only remaining question is what will the operator look like? -Blake	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class by TheDamian (Vicar) on Sep 28, 2001 at 14:12 UTC
The only remaining question is what will the operator look like? `if (tell $you) { require kill 9 => $you }` `;-)`	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class by davorg (Chancellor) on Sep 28, 2001 at 16:18 UTC
The only remaining question is what will the operator look like? I didn't tell you this, right, but you may find a clue here. -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> "The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class by runrig (Abbot) on Sep 28, 2001 at 01:02 UTC
I agree that for this particular example a workaround is trivial and this module is probably not the best way to go, but I think the general idea of the module is great and can be used in non-trivial ways. And it might be one way to go for the original poster's problem, though (from my limited understanding of Class::Mulitmethods), he would have to do something more different than just passing in a simple scalar string with two different values, he would have to instead have different argument types or different numbers of arguments (Class::Multimethods doesn't seem to be able to dispatch based on the value of scalar args, just their type).	[reply]
An OO Challenge (Was Re4: OO Perl: calling a constructor within a class) by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Sep 28, 2001 at 01:13 UTC
I would very much like to see a case in Perl where the exact same function name has to be used for two completely different functions within the same object. In fact, I put this up as a friendly challenge, runrig. Actually, it's open to anyone who cares to try. :-) ------ We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.	[reply]


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