I liked Abigail's take as well. The DESTROY problem is easy to get around.

my (%Attr1, %Attr2,%Attr3);
my @USED = (\%Attr1, \%Attr2, \%Attr3);

sub DESTROY {
   my $self = shift;
   delete $_->{$self} foreach @USED;
}
[download]

The serialization is a larger problem. I don't like the idea of everyone having to agree on a standard way of doing things to get the benefits of prior work. (This is Perl after all.) There are hooks in Data::Dumper and Storable, for serialization, it seems to me, that it might make better sense to provide a serialization hook instead. (Though getting the modules to recognize this from subclasses is another issue. Perhaps a patch to Dumper that looks for a Freezer method automatically if the class isa Dumper. (Same for Storable). Seems like it would be easier to patch the few main serialization modules then every other module on CPAN that you may want to inherit from.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

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