Re: "Fields" for "Objects"

[vek]

I usually write getter/setter combos:

sub accountnumber {
   my ($self, $num) = @_;

   if (defined($num)) {
      $self->{account_num} = $num;
      return $self;
   } else {
      return $self->{account_num};
   }
}

But even that's a pain in the arse too. So, Class::Accessor for the win.

use base qw(Class::Accessor);

__PACKAGE__->mk_accessors(qw(accountnumber));

[whakka]

It's interesting, this is how I write them too. But I noticed lodin's node, which contains an important but subtle difference; by doing this:

sub field {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->{field} = $_[0] if @_;
    ...
}

instead of this:

sub field {
    my ($self,$val) = @_;
    $self->{field} = $val if defined $val;
    ...
}

you don't run into issues where $self->field(undef) would silently return the old value without changing it, which isn't what you might expect. But because I've seen the second form elsewhere and it's technically better practice to assign @_ to variables I just stuck with it, but clearly the first way is better.