Perl Pocket Reference, 4th Edition

Chapter 15. Object-Oriented Programming

An object is a referent that knows which class it belongs to.

A class is a package that provides methods. If a package fails to provide a method, the base classes as listed in @ISA are searched, depth first.

A method is a subroutine that expects an invocant (an object reference or, for static methods, a package name) as the first argument.

bless ref [ , classname ]

Turns the referent ref into an object in classname (default is the current package). Returns the reference.

invocant-> method [ ( parameters ) ]

Calls the named method.

method invocant [ parameters ]

Provides an alternative way of calling a method, using the sometimes ambiguous indirect object syntax.

See also ref, and the next section.

perlobj, perlboot, perltoot, perltooc.