Re: "cleaning out" object data

[merlyn]

Are you sure you're ready for "object oriented programming"? In all the years I've done OOP (25 years now), I've never wanted to "clean out all the data without deleting the object itself". Maybe if you state what your real problem is, we can reply with a more in-band way of accomplishing this.

I know that if I saw code like your delete, I'd pull one of those Scooby-Do scrunchy-face "HunH?" expressions. So, even if this accomplishes what you want in the short-term, you're destroying your long term maintainability. Perl code already gets a bad slap too often for that—no point in increasing that by going down the path you've started to choose.

[Forsaken]

Very well, the specific application for which I need this is an object that stores information regarding an IRC connection. Channelnames, the nicks of the people on those channels, their modes, etc. etc. etc. However, should for some reason the connection fail all that info is moot and needs to disappear, and will be reassembled once the connection has been reestablished.

[merlyn]

Ok, then you don't want to completely delete your instance vars. You want to reset the values of those vars to empty:

sub reset_me {
  my $self = shift;
  $self->{known_nicks} = {};
  $self->{known_channelnames} = {};
}

In fact, you can use that code during your initialization as well. Then when you add a new instance var, you'll have a clean place to initialize it for everyone.

---

update: And as an afterthought, this will also permit your class to be reused for subclasses more directly, since you won't be accidentally clearing out variables that your subclasses need to retain.

[Forsaken]

Sounds like an excellent approach, think I just might do it that way.

Disclaimer 1: this was more of a "hmm, wonder how this would work, let's see if the monks know" kinda question than a real "omg, I *MUST* know this in order to be able to progress" kinda thing.
Disclaimer 2: I'm a big boy. Although it could have been phrased differently merlyn's original questions were perfectly valid.