Recipe 5.2: Declaring Initializers

Last Updated: Sep 8, 2003 Status: Draft

Problem:  

You want to create one or more initializers for your class: methods that, when called on a newly created object, initialize that object.

Solution:  

Use the init keyword to create the methods:

class MyClass is ParentClass {
    has $.count = 0;
    
    init ( ... ) { ... }
    init ( ... ) { ... }
    init ( ... ) { ... }
}

Discussion:

Initializers in Perl6 are defined using init. Initializers are autochained, such that any applicable initializers in parent classes are invoked before your subclass initializer is called.

Initializers may be multimethods: there may be any number of initializers, each accepting different arguments and initializing the object in different ways.

(This recipe is a placeholder, until it is determined whether 'init' is different from 'new' in Perl6 classes.)

Issue: It is actually fairly dubious that initializers could be effectively autochained, if they are allowed to have arguments (since the arguments for parent classes and subclasses wouldn't necessarily match.)

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