I have a question/request concerning perl6 object properties.
I've done some work with .NET and They have come up with a really slick way
to handle object properties.
A typical property definition in VB.NET looks like:
Public Property description() As String
Get
return aString
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As String)
' set value
End Set
End Property
You can use it like this:
oObj.description = sDescr ' calls setter
sDescr = oObj.description ' calls getter
This allows proper encapsulation of object properties while providing a very
clean interface. A corollary feature is that properties can map to arbitrary
values. I've written object property definitions that read and write
directly to relational databases, and Ive written read only properties that
abstract XPath queries to config files.
My main interest in the feature is using the assignment operator to assign
to object properties.
I posted a question to CLPM on how to do this with perl5 and we decided to
use an 'lvalue' attribute on the subroutine and then make the returned
lvalue in the sub a tied variable to intercept read/writes:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=5489106ee6715c8e
It works, but its obviously slow and can get confusing for anything
moderately complex.
I just thought I would share this and see if anything similar can fit in the
perl6 OO syntax.
Todd W.
