http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=168794


in reply to Basic Objects with Overloaded Operators

In playing with overloading in the past, I noticed that you can overload the <> "iteration" operator. However, it's not clear (to me) from the docs just what your function is supposed to do. Has anyone out there ever overloaded this, and if so, what are the rules?

/s

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Re: Re: Basic Objects with Overloaded Operators
by Zaxo (Archbishop) on May 31, 2002 at 01:31 UTC

    The Camel, 3ed. has an example:

    package LuckyDraw; use overload '<>' => sub { my $self = shift; return splice @$self, rand @$self, 1; }; sub new { my class = shift; return bless [@_] -> $self; } 1;
    The book does not discuss the rules, but I'm sure this example breaks some of them. To work with while (<$foo>){}, I think the return value should be true in 'bool' context until the source is exhausted. To cope with my @shuffle=<$deck>; and with slices, a wantarray clause should be there to shuffle and return the whole $deck, leaving $deck empty.

    The rules you observe should only be the ones you need to observe.

    After Compline,
    Zaxo

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