Analiz...ributes(3pm)

💖 NAME 💖

ok so this is Analizo::Metric::NumberOfPublicAttributes — the Number of Public Attributes metric, aka NPA if you're in a hurry. it's a Perl module that lives in the User Contributed Perl Documentation section of your man pages (you know, the 3pm girlies), and it does exactly one thing and does it well: it counts the public attributes of a class. that's it. that's the whole job. 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

the calculation here is based on an article, bestie — and what it's calculating is literally just the number of public attributes of a class. one metric, no cap.

• Article: Monitoring of source code metrics in open source projects by Paulo Roberto Miranda Meirelles 📚

and here's the adaptation of the paragraph in that article about Number of Public Attributes, because honestly it explains the whole vibe better than I ever could:

It measures the encapsulation. The attributes of a class must only serve to the functionalities of itself. Thus, good programming practices recommend that the attributes of a class must be manipulated using the access methods (Beck, 1997), the attributes of a class must be private, indicating that the ideal number for this metric is zero.

so yeah. short version: this metric is a vibe check on your encapsulation 🦋 it's measuring how locked-down your class is. the tea is that a class's attributes should only be serving that class's own functionality — nothing else, nobody else, mind your business ✋

and good programming practices (hi Beck, 1997 👋) say you should be reaching your attributes through the access methods, not grabbing them directly. attributes should be private, which means…

the ideal number for this metric is literally zero 💀

yes bestie, zero. if this metric is anything above 0 for you, it's giving "opened the fridge and everything fell out" energy. go make those attributes private, you got this 🫶

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ok that's the whole page! no hidden flags, no secret options, no trap doors — just one metric and one very strong opinion about encapsulation.

perl v5.40.1 · 2025-12-13 — mwah, happy metric-watching, bestie, go get that zero 💖✨🎀