Object-Oriented Programming In Perl

Length: 3 days

Prerequisites: Students should have taken Intermediate Topics in Perl or should be familiar with Perl modules, namespaces, and references.

• 0: Review of references and coumpound data structures (if necessary)
  
  • Why References?
  • Reference Syntax
  • Make Rules 1 and 2; use rules 1 and 2
  • Two-Dimensional Arrays; arrow rule
  • City-Country Problem
  • Hash of arrays
  • Printing out a Reference
  • Symbolic References
  • strict refs
  • Finding the Type of a Reference
  • Copying vs. Aliasing
  • Code References
  • Schwartzian Transform
    
    
• I: Basic Object-Oriented Programming
  
  • Why OOP?
  • Methods
  • Classes
  • Typical OO Program
  • Inside the Person Class
  • Constructors
  • Object methods
  • Accessor methods
  • croak
  • Class vs. Object Methods
  • "Indirect Object" Style
  • Dynamic method calls
  • Change of implementation; broken encapsulation boundaries
  • Review of OO Concepts
  • Lab 1
    
    
• II: Inheritance
  • Summary of OOP
  • Inheritance; jargon
  • Setting up Inheritance in Perl; @ISA
  • Multiple Inheritance
  • Constructors revisited
  • The empty subclass test
  • Overridden methods; partial inheritance
  • Delegation
  • Refactoring
  • Abstract Classes: HTML::Parser example
  • Lab 2
    
    
• III: Advanced Topics A
  • IIIa: Named Parameters
    • Hashes as Lists; reverse Trick
    • Named Parameter Style
  • IIIb: Autoloading
    • What is Autoloading?
    • Simple AUTOLOAD Example
    • Magic goto
    • Case-Insensitive Function Calls
    • Typical AUTOLOAD Use: Accessor Methods
    • Direct Emulation of Accessors
    • Globs
    • Caching Accessor Methods
    • Autoloading From a File
  • IIIc: Conditional Module Loading
    • Conditional Module Loading
    • use vs. require
    • BEGIN blocks
      
      
• IV: Advanced Topics B
  • IVa: Destruction and Garbage Collection
    • Memory management in Perl
    • Reference counts; reference loops
    • When Reference Counting Doesn't Work
    • DESTROY; chained DESTROY
    • END blocks
    • UNIVERSAL methods
  • IVb: Polymorphism
  • IVc: Encapsulation strategies
    
    
• V: Error Handling
  • The Perl Builtin Debugger
  • $!
  • Exceptions; catching exceptions
  • Conditional module loading again
  • Object exceptions
  • CPAN exception modules
  • strict; strict vars; strict subs; bareword maintenance problem
  • Warnings; perldiag; problems with warnings
  • confess; caller
  • Common Subtle Errors: $_; my-if; @array[$n]

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