If you're still with us, then here are three very simple definitions that you should find reassuring.
package Critter;
sub new { bless {} }
The {} constructs a reference to an anonymous hash containing no key/value pairs.
The bless takes that reference and tells the object it
references that it's now a Critter, and returns the reference. This is for
convenience, because the referenced object itself knows that it has been
blessed, and its reference to it could have been returned directly, like
this:
sub new {
my $self = {};
bless $self;
return $self;
}
In fact, you often see such a thing in more complicated constructors that wish to call methods in the class as part of the construction:
sub new {
my $self = {}
bless $self;
$self->initialize();
return $self;
}
If you care about inheritance (and you should; see Modules: Creation, Use, and Abuse), then you want to use the two-arg form of bless so that your constructors may be inherited:
sub new {
my $class = shift;
my $self = {};
bless $self, $class
$self->initialize();
return $self;
}
Or if you expect people to call not just CLASS->new but also
$obj->new, then use something like this. The initialize method used
will be of whatever $class we blessed the object into:
sub new {
my $this = shift;
my $class = ref($this) || $this;
my $self = {};
bless $self, $class
$self->initialize();
return $self;
}
Within the class package, the methods will typically deal with the reference as an ordinary reference. Outside the class package, the reference is generally treated as an opaque value that may be accessed only through the class's methods.
A constructor may re-bless a referenced object currently belonging to another class, but then the new class is responsible for all cleanup later. The previous blessing is forgotten, as an object may belong to only one class at a time. (Although of course it's free to inherit methods from many classes.)
A clarification: Perl objects are blessed. References
are not. Objects know which package they belong to. References do not. The
bless function uses the reference to find the object. Consider
the following example:
$a = {};
$b = $a;
bless $a, BLAH;
print "\$b is a ", ref($b), "\n";
This reports $b as being a
BLAH, so obviously bless operated on the
object and not on the reference.
There is a special array within each package called @ISA which says where else to look for a method if you can't find it in the current package. This is how Perl implements inheritance. Each element of the @ISA array is just the name of another package that happens to be a class package. The classes are searched (depth first) for missing methods in the order that they occur in
@ISA. The classes accessible through @ISA are known as base classes of the current class.
If a missing method is found in one of the base classes, it is cached in
the current class for efficiency. Changing @ISA or defining
new subroutines invalidates the cache and causes Perl to do the lookup
again.
If a method isn't found, but an AUTOLOAD routine is found, then that is called on behalf of the missing method.
If neither a method nor an AUTOLOAD routine is found in @ISA, then one last try is made for the method (or an AUTOLOAD routine) in a class called UNIVERSAL. (Several commonly used methods are automatically supplied in the UNIVERSAL class; see Default UNIVERSAL methods for more details.) If that doesn't work, Perl finally gives up and complains.
Perl classes do only method inheritance. Data inheritance is left up to the class itself. By and large, this is not a problem in Perl, because most classes model the attributes of their object using an anonymous hash, which serves as its own little namespace to be carved up by the various classes that might want to do something with the object.
A class method expects a class name as the first argument. It provides functionality for the class as a whole, not for any individual object belonging to the class. Constructors are typically class methods. Many class methods simply ignore their first argument, because they already know what package they're in, and don't care what package they were invoked via. (These aren't necessarily the same, because class methods follow the inheritance tree just like ordinary instance methods.) Another typical use for class methods is to look up an object by name:
sub find {
my ($class, $name) = @_;
$objtable{$name};
}
An instance method expects an object reference as its first argument. Typically it shifts the first argument into a ``self'' or ``this'' variable, and then uses that as an ordinary reference.
sub display {
my $self = shift;
my @keys = @_ ? @_ : sort keys %$self;
foreach $key (@keys) {
print "\t$key => $self->{$key}\n";
}
}
print STDERR "help!!!\n";
This same syntax can be used to call either class or instance methods. We'll use the two methods defined above, the class method to lookup an object reference and the instance method to print out its attributes.
$fred = find Critter "Fred";
display $fred 'Height', 'Weight';
These could be combined into one statement by using a BLOCK in the indirect object slot:
display {find Critter "Fred"} 'Height', 'Weight';
For C++ fans, there's also a syntax using -> notation that does exactly the same thing. The parentheses are required if there are any arguments.
$fred = Critter->find("Fred");
$fred->display('Height', 'Weight');
or in one statement,
Critter->find("Fred")->display('Height', 'Weight');
There are times when one syntax is more readable, and times when the other syntax is more readable. The indirect object syntax is less cluttered, but it has the same ambiguity as ordinary list operators. Indirect object method calls are parsed using the same rule as list operators: ``If it looks like a function, it is a function''. (Presuming for the moment that you think two words in a row can look like a function name. C++ programmers seem to think so with some regularity, especially when the first word is ``new''.) Thus, the parentheses of
new Critter ('Barney', 1.5, 70)
are assumed to surround ALL the arguments of the method call, regardless of what comes after. Saying
new Critter ('Bam' x 2), 1.4, 45
would be equivalent to
Critter->new('Bam' x 2), 1.4, 45
which is unlikely to do what you want.
There are times when you wish to specify which class's method to use. In this case, you can call your method as an ordinary subroutine call, being sure to pass the requisite first argument explicitly:
$fred = MyCritter::find("Critter", "Fred");
MyCritter::display($fred, 'Height', 'Weight');
Note however, that this does not do any inheritance. If you wish merely to specify that Perl should START looking for a method in a particular package, use an ordinary method call, but qualify the method name with the package like this:
$fred = Critter->MyCritter::find("Fred");
$fred->MyCritter::display('Height', 'Weight');
If you're trying to control where the method search begins and you're executing in the class itself, then you may use the
SUPER pseudo class, which says to start looking in
your base class's @ISA list without having to name it
explicitly:
$self->SUPER::display('Height', 'Weight');
Please note that the SUPER:: construct is meaningful only within the class.
Sometimes you want to call a method when you don't know the method name ahead of time. You can use the arrow form, replacing the method name with a simple scalar variable containing the method name:
$method = $fast ? "findfirst" : "findbest";
$fred->$method(@args);
UNIVERSAL package automatically contains the following methods that are inherited by
all other classes:
isa returns true if its object is blessed into a sub-class of CLASS
isa is also exportable and can be called as a sub with two arguments. This
allows the ability to check what a reference points to. Example
use UNIVERSAL qw(isa);
if(isa($ref, 'ARRAY')) {
...
}
can checks to see if its object has a method called METHOD, if it does then a reference to the sub is returned, if it does not then
undef is returned.
VERSION returns the version number of the class (package). If the
NEED argument is given then it will check that the current version (as defined by the $VERSION variable in the given package) not less than
NEED; it will die if this is not the case. This method is normally called as a class method. This method is called automatically by the
VERSION form of use.
use A 1.2 qw(some imported subs);
# implies:
A->VERSION(1.2);
can directly uses Perl's internal code for method lookup, and
isa uses a very similar method and cache-ing strategy. This may cause strange
effects if the Perl code dynamically changes @ISA in any
package.
You may add other methods to the
UNIVERSAL class via Perl or
XS code. You do not need to
use UNIVERSAL in order to make these methods available to your program. This is necessary
only if you wish to have isa available as a plain subroutine in the current package.
Perl doesn't do nested destruction for you. If your constructor re-blessed a reference from one of your base classes, your DESTROY may need to call DESTROY for any base classes that need it. But this applies to only re-blessed objects--an object reference that is merely CONTAINED in the current object will be freed and destroyed automatically when the current object is freed.
That means that below, A and B are equivalent to each other, and C and D are equivalent, but AB and CD are different:
A: method $obref->{"fieldname"}
B: (method $obref)->{"fieldname"}
C: $obref->{"fieldname"}->method()
D: method {$obref->{"fieldname"}}
-O flag, performance will suffer. If you have built Perl with cc -O, then this probably won't matter.
A more serious concern is that unreachable memory with a non-zero reference count will not normally get freed. Therefore, this is a bad idea:
{
my $a;
$a = \$a;
}
Even thought $a should go away, it can't. When building recursive data structures, you'll have to
break the self-reference yourself explicitly if you don't care to leak. For
example, here's a self-referential node such as one might use in a
sophisticated tree structure:
sub new_node {
my $self = shift;
my $class = ref($self) || $self;
my $node = {};
$node->{LEFT} = $node->{RIGHT} = $node;
$node->{DATA} = [ @_ ];
return bless $node => $class;
}
If you create nodes like that, they (currently) won't go away unless you break their self reference yourself. (In other words, this is not to be construed as a feature, and you shouldn't depend on it.)
Almost.
When an interpreter thread finally shuts down (usually when your program exits), then a rather costly but complete mark-and-sweep style of garbage collection is performed, and everything allocated by that thread gets destroyed. This is essential to support Perl as an embedded or a multi-threadable language. For example, this program demonstrates Perl's two-phased garbage collection:
#!/usr/bin/perl
package Subtle;
sub new {
my $test;
$test = \$test;
warn "CREATING " . \$test;
return bless \$test;
}
sub DESTROY {
my $self = shift;
warn "DESTROYING $self";
}
package main;
warn "starting program";
{
my $a = Subtle->new;
my $b = Subtle->new;
$$a = 0; # break selfref
warn "leaving block";
}
warn "just exited block";
warn "time to die...";
exit;
When run as /tmp/test, the following output is produced:
starting program at /tmp/test line 18.
CREATING SCALAR(0x8e5b8) at /tmp/test line 7.
CREATING SCALAR(0x8e57c) at /tmp/test line 7.
leaving block at /tmp/test line 23.
DESTROYING Subtle=SCALAR(0x8e5b8) at /tmp/test line 13.
just exited block at /tmp/test line 26.
time to die... at /tmp/test line 27.
DESTROYING Subtle=SCALAR(0x8e57c) during global destruction.
Notice that ``global destruction'' bit there? That's the thread garbage collector reaching the unreachable.
Objects are always destructed, even when regular refs aren't and in fact are destructed in a separate pass before ordinary refs just to try to prevent object destructors from using refs that have been themselves destructed. Plain refs are only garbage-collected if the destruct level is greater than 0. You can test the higher levels of global destruction by setting the
PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL environment variable, presuming
-DDEBUGGING was enabled during perl build time.
A more complete garbage collection strategy will be implemented at a future date.