1OBJECTS(1)            User Contributed Perl Documentation           OBJECTS(1)
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NAME

6       PDL::Objects -- Object-Orientation, what is it and how to exploit it
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DESCRIPTION

9       This still needs to be written properly.  [Also, is there a good reason
10       we don't recommend storing extra object data in the header hash?]
11
12   Inheritance
13       There are basically two reasons for subclassing ndarrays.  The first is
14       simply that you want to be able to use your own routines like
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16               $ndarray->something()
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18       but don't want to mess up the PDL namespace (a worthy goal, indeed!).
19       The other is that you wish to provide special handling of some
20       functions or more information about the data the ndarray contains.  In
21       the first case, you can do with
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23               package BAR;
24               @ISA=qw/PDL/;
25               sub foo {my($this) = @_; fiddle;}
26
27               package main;
28               $x = PDL::pdl(BAR,5);
29               $x->foo();
30
31       However, because a PDL object is an opaque reference to a C struct, it
32       is not possible to extend the PDL class by e.g. extra data via
33       subclassing.  To circumvent this problem PerlDL has built-in support to
34       extent the PDL class via the has-a relation for blessed hashes.  You
35       can get the HAS-A behave like IS-A simply in that you assign the "PDL"
36       object to the attribute named PDL and redefine the method initialize().
37
38           package FOO;
39
40           @FOO::ISA = qw(PDL);
41           sub initialize {
42               my $class = shift;
43               my $self = {
44                       creation_time => time(),  # necessary extension :-)
45                       PDL => null,             # used to store PDL object
46                       };
47               bless $self, $class;
48           }
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50       All PDL constructors will call initialize() to make sure that your
51       extensions are added by all PDL constructors automatically.   The "PDL"
52       attribute is used by perlDL to store the PDL object and all PDL methods
53       use this attribute automatically if they are called with a blessed hash
54       reference instead of a PDL object (a blessed scalar).
55
56       Do remember that if you subclass a class that is subclassed from an
57       ndarray, you need to call SUPER::initialize.
58
59       NEED STUFF ABOUT CODE REFs!!
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61   Examples
62       You can find some simple examples of PDL subclassing in the PDL
63       distribution test-case files. Look in "t/subclass2.t", "t/subclass3.t",
64       etc.
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66   Output Auto-Creation and Subclassed Objects
67       For PDL Functions where the output is created and returned, PDL will
68       either call the subclassed object's "initialize" or "copy" method to
69       create the output object. (See PDL::Indexing for a discussion on Output
70       Auto-Creation.) This behavior is summarized as follows:
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72
73        For Simple functions, defined as having a signature of
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75         func( a(), [o]b() )
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77        PDL will call $a->copy to create the output object.
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79        In the spirit of the Perl philosophy of making Easy Things Easy, This
80        behavior enables PDL-subclassed objects to be written without having
81        to overload the many simple PDL functions in this category.
82
83        The file t/subclass4.t in the PDL Distribution tests for this
84        behavior.  See that file for an example.
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86
87        For other functions, PDL will call $class->initialize to create the
88        output object.  Where $class is the class name of the first argument
89        supplied to the function.
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91        For these more complex cases, it is difficult to second-guess the
92        subclassed object's designer to know if a "copy" or a "initialize" is
93        appropriate. So for these cases, $class->initialize is called by
94        default. If this is not appropriate for you, overload the function in
95        your subclass and do whatever is appropriate is the overloaded
96        function's code.
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AUTHOR

99       Copyright (C) Karl Glazebrook (kgb@aaoepp.aao.gov.au), Tuomas J. Lukka,
100       (lukka@husc.harvard.edu) and Christian Soeller
101       (c.soeller@auckland.ac.nz) 2000.  All rights reserved. There is no
102       warranty. You are allowed to copy this on the same terms as Perl
103       itself.
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107perl v5.36.0                      2022-07-22                        OBJECTS(1)
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