Objects as arrays but with autogenerated getters + setters

[tinita]

hi monks,

I'm a big fan of objects that are implemented as arrays.
They save a bit cpu, they save a bit memory, and while it may not be much, the fact that it's saving cpu *and* memory attracts me =)

also, with arrays instead of hashes, I can't be tempted to access the attributes by accessing the hash directly.

I can't find a module on CPAN that does that for me. Class::Accessor and similar modules use hashes.
Is there a module that does that? Otherwise I would like to write a little module myself (I know, there are already a lot of these kind of modules...). Here's a starter:

package Class::Accessor::Eval;
use Carp qw(croak carp);
use strict;
use warnings;
sub import {
    my ($self, %args) = @_;
    my $get = $args{get};
    my $set = $args{set};
    my $names = $args{names};
    my $class = caller();
    for my $i (0..$#$names) {
        my $name = $names->[$i];
        my $get = $get;
        my $set = $set;
        for ($get, $set) {
            s/\$name/$name/g;
            s/\$i/$i/g;
        }   
        my $code = <<"EOM";
package $class;
$get
$set
EOM
        eval $code;
        if ($@) {
            croak "Error compiling $name: $@\n";
        }
    }
}
1;

#############

package Foo;
use Class::Accessor::Eval
    get => <<'EOM',
sub get_$name {
    $_[0]->[$i]
}
EOM
    set => <<'EOM',
sub set_$name {
    $_[0]->[$i] = $_[1]
}
EOM
    names => [qw(name age city job salary ...)];
#####################

package main;
my $foo = bless ["foo", 100], "Foo";
use Data::Dumper;
warn Data::Dumper->Dump([\$foo], ['foo']);
print $foo->get_age,$/;
$foo->set_age(23);
print $foo->get_age,$/;

a 'new' method is missing, and a default if you don't want to write the get/set yourself.

any comments? If noone finds that a useful module it's probably worthless to upload it. I'm also seeking for a better name.

update: maybe Class::Accessor::Fast::Array would be a possibility. that would keep it simple and follow the standard of Class::Accessor

update2: marty (Class::Accessor) actually will release an additional module that would work like my C::A::F::Array idea. he has the code ready, it just needs to be tested and released.

[Solo]

You might want to look at Class::MakeMethods.

[tinita]

thanks, I'll have a look at it. after a quick glance, I didn't find out how to use get_attr and set_attr method names, though.

[Solo]

package Foo;
use Class::MakeMethods::Template::Array (
    'new'    => 'new',
    'scalar' => [ -interface=> { 'get_*'=>'get', 'set_*'=>'set' },
                  qw/ name age city job salary /,
                ],
);

package main;
use Data::Dumper;

my $foo = Foo->new();
$foo->set_name("foo");
$foo->set_age(100);

warn Data::Dumper->Dump([$foo], ['foo']);
print $foo->get_age,$/;
$foo->set_age(23);
print $foo->get_age,$/;

[HuckinFappy]

Isn't this what Object::InsideOut does (and a whole lot more)?

[tinita]

thanks, i will have a look at that, too. i thought in inside out objects attributes are stored in hashes with the object (stringified) as a key. that would be an extra hash lookup.

edit: ah, a sequence number can be used for the id of an object. seems this could be what i want (edit2: although O::IO does way more than i need, and actually in some cases i might not want to use inside-out objects.)

[ForgotPasswordAgain]

I was wondering, since you want to save memory and CPU, whether you benchmarked your approach versus a simple hash-based approach (or others).

[tinita]

yes, i did a simple benchmark:

timethese($ARGV[0]||-1, {
    hash => sub { $foo->set_name("x");return $foo->get_name },
    array => sub { $bar->set_name("x");return $bar->get_name },
    });

$foo is a blessed hash and $bar a blessed array. both have 15 attributes. the array subroutine takes about 93% of the time.

memory saving depends, of course, on the length of the hash keys. with 15 hash keys of length 5 i save about 15% 35%. (measured with Devel::Size::total_size)

edit: i measured wrong for the memory test. i was just copying references before.