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=head1 TITLE
PRAYER - what gets said when you C<bless> something
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Simon Cozens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 25 Sep 2000
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 307
Version: 1
Status: Developing
=head1 ABSTRACT
This RFC proposes a special sub, C<PRAYER>, which is automatically called
on C<bless>ing.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
The abstract more or less says it all, but this is more than just a
joke. Suppose, for instance, your class needs to do some initialisation
whenever a new object is created; C<PRAYER> would be where the class
initialisation takes place.
There's also the more interesting and (IMHO) important issue of
reblessing; that is, changing the class of an object. There are times
when you want to do this, but it's hairy because you have to know the
workings of both classes. However, if you have C<PRAYER> called
automatically on C<bless>ing, you can automagically "cast" objects
between classes. For instance, an object in class X would get changed to
an object in class Y with
bless $obj, "Y";
Perl would then perform the reblessing and call:
package Y;
sub PRAYER ($object, $oldclass) {
if ($oldclass eq "X") {
...
} else {
die "Can't cast an $oldclass to a Y";
}
}
You may also use this method as a form of "pre-constructor", or even, on
simple enough classes, a constructor proper.
Maybe subs to cast between classes should somehow be shared between the
two classes; the special sub C<INTERCESSION> would be the obvious place
for that.
=head1 IMPLEMENTATION
Adding a method call to the end of C<bless> should not be tricky.
=head1 REFERENCES
None.
