note demerphq <em>I'm not yet sure which operators perls overloading can handle</em><p> AFAIK All of them. Even the handling of different quoting types in the code.<p> Its a fallback system however. If the operator is explicitly defined then that definition is used, otherwise if overload can syntheisze the behaviour of the opertor in question by using a different defined operator then it will do so. For instance defining '<=>' and 'cmp' with the normal settings (the fallback behaviour is configurable) iirc will cause all of the equivelency operators, numeric and string, behavior to be overriden.<p> One thing you have to watch out for however is the common debugging habit of stringifying references by concatenation. The "" operator can cause some suprising results.<p> A fairly common use of overload might be <code> use overload qw("" stringify <=> num_comparision cmp str_comparison); </code> When the right hand side is a string as it is in this case then the handler is expected to be a method of that name called against the object. Otherwise a coderef is expected.<p> The overload docs were written by a mathematician which is why they are relatively incomprehensible to mere mortals like us. Its incredibly easy to miss details or become confused when reading that document. I think I've read it at least ten times and I still find things I haven't seen before. <P> --- demerphq<br> my friends call me, usually because I'm late....<br> 221498 221622