> No, I don't want to tighten up anything about Perl's existing package
> and blessed reference system. It's fine the way it is. I *ALSO*
> want a more formally defined OO system for times when I'm feeling more
> structured, or when the scale or scope of the project I'm working on
> demans it. This should definately, absolutely, without doubt be an
> "as well as" option and not "instead of". Hence the new kind of package,
> and the new kind of operator, rather than messing around with the old ones.
Have you played with Class::Contract? I think it would give you as much
formality as you need, and it's just a module built over Perl's existing
OO mechanism.
I intend to propose features that will extend the current mechanism to
make the 'hoops' easier to jump through, but I'm incredibly leery of
putting two distinct OO mechanisms into Perl. That *won't* satisfy the
OO purists or those who need guaranteed security.
And I'm *really* against . as an attribute access mechanism :-)
But that's okay, since I don't have the final say. If I were you, I'd make
the RFC *more* sweeping -- propose your approach as a *replacement* for
the current one (then you could claim ->, and not have to overload .)
Damian
