NAME

accessors::classic - create 'classic' read/write accessor methods in caller's package.

SYNOPSIS

package Foo;
use accessors::classic qw( foo bar baz );

my $obj = bless {}, 'Foo';

# always return the current value, even on set:
$obj->foo( 'hello ' ) if $obj->bar( 'world' ) eq 'world';

print $obj->foo, $obj->bar, $obj->baz( "!\n" );

DESCRIPTION

The accessors::classic pragma lets you create simple classic Perl accessors at compile-time.

The generated methods look like this:

sub foo {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->{foo} = shift if (@_);
    return $self->{foo};
}

They always return the current value.

Note that there is no dash (-) prepended to the property name as there are in accessors. This is for backwards compatability.

PERFORMANCE

There is little-to-no performace hit when using generated accessors; in fact there is usually a performance gain.

• typically 5-15% faster than hard-coded accessors (like the above example).

• typically 1-15% slower than optimized accessors (less readable).

• typically a small performance hit at startup (accessors are created at compile-time).

• uses the same anonymous sub to reduce memory consumption (sometimes by 80%).

See the benchmark tests included with this distribution for more details.

CAVEATS

Classes using blessed scalarrefs, arrayrefs, etc. are not supported for sake of simplicity. Only hashrefs are supported.

AUTHOR

Steve Purkis <spurkis@cpan.org>

SEE ALSO

accessors, accessors::rw, accessors::ro, accessors::chained, base