For what it's worth, I think I prefer this syntax: 
my $window = Gtk2::Window->new( "toplevel" )->call_method_list(
    signal_connect   => [ delete_event => sub { Gtk2->main_quit } ],
    set_title        => "Test",
    set_border_width => 15,
    add => Gtk2::Button->new( "Quit" )->call_method_list( 
        signal_connect => [ clicked => sub { Gtk2->main_quit } ] ),
    'show_all',
);

[download]

Implementation follows: 

use Carp qw( croak );
sub UNIVERSAL::call_method_list {
  my $target = shift;
  
  while ( scalar @_ ) {
    my $method = shift @_;
    my @args = (! scalar @_) ? () : (ref($_[0]) eq 'ARRAY') ? @{shift}
+ : shift;
    eval { $target->$method( @args ) };
    if( $@ ) { croak( $@ ) }
  }
  
  return $target;
}

[download]

P.S.: Unfortunately, if( $@ ) { require Carp; Carp::croak( $@ ) } won't work the way you want it to, because if Carp hasn't already been required, the process of loading it clears $@, so it's not available to the croak call. You could write it as if ( my $err = $@ ) { ... croak( $err) } but I think that in practice this technique will only be used in larger, non-trivial applications, so you might as well just require Carp up front.

In reply to Re: multiple method calls against the same object, revisited by simonm
in thread multiple method calls against the same object, revisited by Aristotle

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