access...lassic(3pm)

🎀 accessors::classic — the manual, but make it cute

okay bestie, so we're talking about accessors::classic, a Perl thing from the User Contributed Perl Documentation section (that's the 3pm vibe iykyk). it's a pragma, it's iconic, and it makes accessor methods for you. let's get into it 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

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

like. that's the whole job. it pops accessors into your package. no cap. 🫶

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✨ 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" );

okay so look at that little moment right there — $obj->bar( 'world' ) sets the value and hands you back 'world' in the same breath, so the eq 'world' check is true and the if fires. the way that works?? obsessed. 💖

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so accessors::classic is a pragma that lets you create simple, classic Perl accessors at compile-time. boom. done. before your program even really gets going, the accessors just exist. main character energy fr fr. 👑

the generated methods look like this:

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

they always return the current value. always always. set it, get it back, it's giving read/write. ✨

heads up bestie: there is no dash ("-") prepended to the property name like there is in accessors. that's on purpose — it's for backwards compatibility. do not come for me about it, it's intentional. 😌

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✨ PERFORMANCE ✨

okay so the tea here is that using generated accessors has little-to-no performance hit — and honestly, there's usually a performance gain. slay. 🔥

• typically 5-15% faster than hard-coded accessors (like the above example).
• typically 1-15% slower than optimized accessors (which are, and i quote, less readable).
• typically a small performance hit at startup — because the accessors are created at compile-time.
• uses the same anonymous sub to reduce memory consumption (sometimes by 80%?!?! 😭 iconic).

wanna see the receipts? check the benchmark tests included with this distribution for more details. 🧚

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✨ CAVEATS ✨

okay so here's the boundary, bestie, and it's a hard one:

classes using blessed scalarrefs, arrayrefs, etc. are not supported, for the sake of simplicity. only hashrefs are supported. periodt.

so if your object is a blessed scalarref... it's not happening. sorry babe 💀

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✨ AUTHOR ✨

Steve Purkis <spurkis@cpan.org> — absolute legend, we love them, we thank them 🫶

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

go read these next, bestie, they're the whole friend group:

• accessors
• accessors::rw
• accessors::ro
• accessors::chained
• base

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and that's the whole page!! 💖 this one came from perl v5.36.0, dated 2022-10-13, and it lives in the User Contributed Perl Documentation section as access...lassic(3pm). mwah, go write some accessors, you've got this 🌸⭐🦋