Re^5: regex transforms of object attributes

[Roy Johnson]

But honestly: if it's settable and gettable, what are the chances that it's not going to be a simple variable?

And a minute after posting that, I encountered this node, that answered my question one way: it's possible that a value needs to be encoded to be stored, and decoded to be retrieved. So there I have it. On the other hand, if you use a tied variable, you can do your encoding and decoding transparently and not break encapsulation...

[herveus]

Howdy!

...when it gets reimplemented as a value stored in a database somewhere, or stored remotely, such that you access it via SOAP or HTTP or carrier pigeon...or as a value in a hash or array somewhere. But you don't have a need to know...

A procedural interface, whether a get and set pair, or a polymorphic accesser/mutator, provides a way to obtain and change the value while keeping your actions decoupled from the specific storage mechanism.

[Roy Johnson]

It doesn't matter how it's stored. If the interface is set-a-scalar, get-a-scalar, you can do it with a tied scalar. See my meditation on the subject.