"Default" method

[v_melnik]

Dear monks,

I saw a cool trick that XML::LibXML, Throwable and some other libraries can do: when you try to get the value of the variable containing a reference to the object, you get the result of calling one of its' methods (for example as_string() instead of "SomeClass=HASH(0xdeadbeef)".

How to do that?

Thank you!

UPD: Thank you for replies, the "overload" pragma is exactly what I need!

[McA]

Hi,

you can do that with overloading the stringification operator in your class.

use overload (
    '""' => sub { shift->to_string; },
);

where to_string is the method returning a string representation.

Regards
McA

[Anonymous Monk]

I think you mean overload?