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The section on Encapsulation in Chapter 15 of Damian's Perl Best Practices clearly illustrates the several advantages of inside out objects. While I have a sense of the advantages, I lack the knowledge/experience to even summarize them here. However, I suspect that the following twist on that version of inside-out objects still retains the advantages while being simpler (but do not know enough to know for sure).

  • Encapsulation is retained.
  • I suspect the support for spell check in this version is good enough.
  • Regarding memory, this version has one hash per object, but introduces one subroutine per attribute (to support spell checking during run (not compile) time: sub attribute() returns 'attribute'). (I was asked to point out that the update done in response to a comment by chromatic moves the subroutines created to support spell check into members of the hash and so they are repeated for each instance of the object.)
  • I haven't written too many modules and so have no clue if the addition of a sub to dump attributes is sufficient to overcome the "only serious drawback of inside-out objects".

Update: Regarding performance, my inclination is to put the spell-check subs (sub attribute() returning 'attribute') in a BEGIN block under the assumption that the compiler will optimize away these trivial subs.

Update: Modified code to respond to comment by chromatic.

Update - Psychological Aspect: I now understand why I had trouble using the original scheme in PBP. While using that scheme, my mind had to deal with multiple attributes -- there wasn't any single object for my mind to use. The Package name represents a family of potential objects; and the object itself doesn't provide anything to think about since it is just a meaningless un-named scalar; so my mind had to deal with the multitude of "attribute_of" (which overloaded the mind to the point of being almost paralyzing). In the present scheme, my mind works with a single, meaningful hash.

{ package Spellaid; # nothing significant about this name use warnings; use strict; use Scalar::Util qw(refaddr); use Data::Dumper; our $VERSION = '0.1.0'; my %stuff_of; # single hash per object my @vars = qw(name task); { no strict qw(refs); # all the attributes foreach my $var ( @vars ) { =for old_1 *{$var} = sub { return $var; }; # the spell-checker! =cut *{'set_'.$var} = sub { ${$stuff_of{refaddr $_[0]}}{$var} = $_[1 +];}; *{'get_'.$var} = sub { return ${$stuff_of{refaddr $_[0]}}{$var} +;} } } sub new { my($class, @args) = @_; my $obj = bless \do{my $anon_scalar}, $class; my $c; ${$c}{name} = 'the name'; ${$c}{task} = 'the task'; # begin added after commenting out "for old_1" { no strict qw(refs); foreach my $var ( @vars ) { ${$c}{'_'.$var} = sub { return $var; }; } } # end added $stuff_of{refaddr $obj} = $c; return $obj; } =for old_1 sub a_complex_sub { my ($self, $new_name) = @_; # deep inside this complex sub, we need the name ... # issue is to catch mis-spelling of the hash key "name" # print "nom: [", ${$stuff_of{refaddr $self}}{name()}, "]\n"; # next line will fail during run time (_not_ compile time) # but does fail with a Kaboom! # Undefined subroutine &Spellaid::nmae called at <file> <li +ne> # So a good/explicit Kaboom!, albeit a late one. print "nom: [", ${$stuff_of{refaddr $self}}{nmae()}, "]\n"; } =cut # begin added after commenting out "for old_1" sub a_complex_sub { my ($self, $new_name) = @_; # deep inside this complex sub, we need the name ... # the correct way would be to extract the name via: # # my $whatever_for_name = ${$stuff_of{refaddr $self}}{_name}(); # # Typo of whatever_for_name will be caught at compile time, # but we are interested in typos of the attribute "name" # So suppose we make a typo "nmae": my $whatever_for_name = ${$stuff_of{refaddr $self}}{_nmae}(); # the preceding line fail during run time (_not_ compile time) # but failure message will show precisely what went wrong # and where exactly. So we do have a good/explicit # Kaboom!, albeit a late one. # how a_complex_sub() would use name: print "nom: [", ${$stuff_of{refaddr $self}}{$whatever_for_name} +, "]\n"; } # end added sub dump_stuff { print Dumper($stuff_of{refaddr $_[0]}); } 1 } my $s_obj = Spellaid->new(); $s_obj->set_name('the new name'); # set print "task: [",$s_obj->get_task(), "]\n"; # get $s_obj->a_complex_sub(); # spell check $s_obj->dump_stuff(); # data dumper __END__ for old_1 output: # with misspelling task: [the task] Undefined subroutine &Spellaid::nmae called at <file> <line> # without misspellin task: [the task] nom: [the new name] $VAR1 = { 'name' => 'the new name', 'task' => 'the task' }; output after commenting out old_1: # with misspelling task: [the task] Use of uninitialized value in subroutine entry at <file> <line> Can't use string ("") as a subroutine ref while "strict refs" in u +se at <file> <line> # without misspellin task: [the task] nom: [the new name] $VAR1 = { '_name' => sub { "DUMMY" }, 'name' => 'the new name', '_task' => sub { "DUMMY" }, 'task' => 'the task' };


In reply to Inside-out objects: encapsulation, spell-check, memory and dumping by sg

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