>Perl 5 supports OO quite well.
Yup! Perl already supports classes and objects, single and multiple
inheritance, instance methods and class methods, access to overridden
methods, constructors and destructors, operator overloading, proxy
methods via autoloading, delegation, a rooted hierarchy for all
objects, and two different levels of garbage collection. It even
supports stronger encapsulation than C++, yet does not mandate this.
>Also read Damien Conway's "Object Oriented Perl" if you want to go further.
Unlike the famous title by Hesse, in this case that would be spelled
DamiAn, actually. :-) But yes, it's a tremendous book. I'm not
even really an interested party, since no money changed hands in
return for my tech editing of that tome. I got something much more
valuable: Damian's reciprocal and much appreciated help with the
relevant sections of Camel 3.
Speaking of which, you'll also find that the new, trebly expanded
objects chapter in Camel 3, along with the two on overloading and
tying, now go a great deal further than previously described, whether
in Camel 2 or in the manpages.
>You'll find that you can develop big projects in perl 5.
It's certainly a myth than "big projects" *can't* be developed
without OO. Well, unless you consider an operating system, a
programming language, or an editor to be small projects--and I for
one do not. OO can help, sure, but not a trifle as much as can a
sound design. And as we all know, good design is orthogonal to OO.
Unfortunately.
I think I can with safely predict that sixth generation Perl will
*not* elevate OO programming to compulsory and exclusionary use,
as that would invalidate TMTOWTDI.
--tom
