Many of my objects have a structure that looks like this:

package MyObject;

sub new {
  my $thing = shift;

  my $class = ref $thing || $thing;

  my $self = bless {}, $class;

  return $self->init(@_);
}

sub init {
  my $self = shift;

  # do initialisation stuff with the values in @_

  return $self;
}
[download]

Does that help you at all?

Update: Actually I tend to agree with both tilly and merlyn on the class/instance method divide. The $class = ref $thing || $thing idiom just seems to be hard-wired into my conciousness thru reading in so many books. I have to think twice to not use it. Generally my new method will be a class method and I'll only create an instance method version in the rare cases when I need a copy constructor.

"The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."