Damian Conway writes: > There's no need for special methods or (gods forbid) more operators. > Just: > > $obj1.id == $obj2.id > > That's what the universal C<id> method is *for*.
How universal are universal methods? That is, can a programmer override .id() in a user-defined class? If so, simply comparing .id for numeric equality isn't a good enough way of comparing object identity. I think you'd have to do something like $obj1.UNIVERSAL::id == $obj2.UNIVERSAL::id which is getting fairly verbose. But I also have a feeling of non-specific unease at the idea that I might _not_ be able to override a universal method. Another question. Consider the integer 17. There are two plausible representations for it -- one boxed, and one unboxed. There might also be several distinct boxed 17s that aren't object-identical. My question is whether all of those should have the same .id(). That is, should the programmer be allowed to determine whether two apparently-identical numbers have the same representation, or should .id() fudge the issue by pretending that all representations of a number of a given type are identical. -- Aaron Crane * GBdirect Ltd. http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/courses/perl/
