[ale] Organizing data

[Jason Etheridge]

Fletch wrote:
> perldoc perlreftut, perldoc perlref.

Yeap.  I missed it the first time around:

      Using a reference as a string produces both its referent's
      type, including any package blessing as described in the
      perlobj manpage, as well as the numeric address expressed in
      hex.  The ref() operator returns just the type of thing the
      reference is pointing to, without the address.  See the ref
      entry in the perlfunc manpage for details and examples of
      its use.

It doesn't warn against using a reference as a string though.  What's 
the fear there?

> Granted an object would probably count as a value in the situation at
> hand this wouldn't be what you'd want, but it's nice to know.

Would Perl be a good language for me to learn object oriented 
programming?  Or would I be better served with something like Python or 
Java?  It's been ages since I messed with C++ or Smalltalk (or 
especially Turbo Pascal 5.5), and I never really did anything on a scale 
where I could see an advantage to using OOP with all those neat 
buzzwords like polymorphism and stuff.

-- Jason