I tend to use:

sub new {
  my $class = shift;
  my $self = {};
  if (bless( $self, $class)->init( @_ )) {
    return $self;
  } else {
    # throw some sort of error
  }
}

sub init { 1; }
[download]

That way all subclasses can initialize themselves in a standard way with something along the lines of:

sub init {
  my $self = shift;
  if ($self->SUPER::init( @_ )) {
    ## do some sort of initialization
    ## or return false
    return 1;
  } else {
    return 0;
  }
}
[download]

and I'll know if something goes wrong...