That certainly is an object. Well, it is to everyone who didn't attend 'Comp Sci: OOP and Pissing on people 101'. It may not meet your definition of an object, but Perl doesn't meet many peoples definition of an object orientated programming language either.

Why not pat someone on the back and say 'Yes. It is an example of code that encapsulates code and data into a uniform interface. And wait till perl 6, when it will have even more object properties to play with.'

Update: I really need to get more sleep before posting things like that. In fact, if I got more sleep I wouldn't post things like that. I'm sorry, ariel, for the rudeness.

However I do not think that 'patting someone on the back is rude' - it may just have different overtones depending on where somebody comes from. dragonchild clearly had a revelation on how to structure code well, so ++ for seeing it. Perl isn't more OO than C++ or Java but it does use some of the ideas of OO when dealing with data.

I guess I'm a little sensitive because I keep being cornered by people who prefer to talk it rather than do it (I'm not accusing you of this) and one of the favourite seems to be whether certain things are OO, functional or whatever.

I can recall having exactly the same thought as dragonchild and then thinking "oh, wait, can't inherit, can't add properties, damn". I was still quite proud of it though.

I think my next project may be a little proggie that monitors what I type and pops up and says "Do you really want to flame him? y/N?" whenever I lack the judgement.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.