Question

Here is the important subset of what I have:

sub logger {
    my $self = shift;
    my %def =  (
        type => $self->{options}{name}, 
        severity => 1,
        date => $self->now(),
        message => ''  
    );
    my %opt = %def;
    if ( my $ref = shift ) {
        %opt = (%def, %{$ref});
    }
    croak('message is a required option') if $opt{message} eq '';
    warn($opt{type} . ': ' . $opt{message} . "\n") if ( $self->{_verbose} );
    # Do some other interesting things.
}

So then I can call it like so:

$op->logger({message => 'Some message'});

So if any of my parameters are missing, they get the defaults I’ve specified in the %def hash. If a required parameter is missing, I die.

The basis of it is I overload the def hash with what the user specified with this.

    if ( my $ref = shift ) {
        %opt = (%def, %{$ref});
    }

Problem with this is they could specify things outside my list of options, or send in a hash instead of a hash ref, or a scalar, or undef, or many other ways this could blow up.

I’m sure there is a more elegant way to handle this.
I seem to recall some code using ref() that didn’t blow up if nothing was passed in.

Answer 1

Method::Signatures does precisely what you’re looking for and is so very elegant :

method logger (
    :$type     = $self->{options}{name},
    :$severity = 1,
    :$date     = $self->now,
    :$message! # No default and required, so croaks if not provided by caller.
) {
    my %opt = (
        type     => $type, 
        severity => $severity,
        date     => $date,
        message  => $message
    );
    # Do some other interesting things.
}

The colons in the signature designate named parameters (passed as a hash). The exclamation mark following $message makes it required.