package configthing; use strict; use warnings; use fields qw( a b c d ); our %DEFAULTS = ( b => 'default for b', c => 'default for c' ); 1; sub new { my $this = shift; unless (ref $this) { $this = fields::new($this); } our %FIELDS; foreach my $k ( keys(%FIELDS) ) { $this->{$k} = '' unless defined($this->{$k}); } $this->{a} = 'set at initialization'; foreach my $k ( keys(%DEFAULTS) ) { $this->{$k} = $DEFAULTS{$k}; } return $this; }