package Foo;

#In Perl, the constructor is just a subroutine called new.
sub new {
  #I don't get what this line does at all, but I always see it. Do I need it?
  my $type = shift;

  #I'm turning the array of inputs into a hash, called parameters.
  my %params = @_;

  #I'm making a new hash called $self to store my instance variables?
  my $self = {};

  #I'm adding two values to the instance variables called "High" and "Low".
  #But I'm not sure how $params{'High'} has any meaning, since it was an
  #array, and I turned it into a hash.
  $self->{'High'} = $params{'High'};
  $self->{'Low'} = $params{'Low'};

  #Even though I read the page on [bless][2], I still don't get what it does.
  bless $self, $type;
}

package Bar;

sub new {
  my $type = shift;

  #I still don't see how I can just turn an array into a hash and expect things
  #to work out for me.
  my %params = @_;
  my $self = [];

  #Exactly where did params{'Left'} and params{'Right'} come from?
  $self->[0] = $params{'Left'};
  $self->[1] = $params{'Right'};

  #and again with the bless.
  bless $self, $type;
}

package main;

$a = Foo->new( 'High' => 42, 'Low' => 11 );
print "High=$a->{'High'}n";
print "Low=$a->{'Low'}n";

$b = Bar->new( 'Left' => 78, 'Right' => 40 );
print "Left=$b->[0]n";
print "Right=$b->[1]n";

sub foo {
    my %stuff = @_;
    ...
}

foo( beer => 'good', vodka => 'great' );

package Foo;

use strict;
use warnings;
use Carp qw(croak);

sub new {
    my $class = shift;

    croak "Illegal parameter list has odd number of values"
        if @_ % 2;

    my %params = @_;

    my $self = {};
    bless $self, $class;

    # This could be abstracted out into a method call if you
    # expect to need to override this check.
    for my $required (qw{ name rank serial_number  });
        croak "Required parameter '$required' not passed to '$class' constructor"
            unless exists $params{$required};
    }

    # initialize all attributes by passing arguments to accessor methods.
    for my $attrib ( keys %params ) {

        croak "Invalid parameter '$attrib' passed to '$class' constructor"
            unless $self->can( $attrib );

        $self->$attrib( $params{$attrib} );
    }

    return $self;
}

my @array = (key1, val1, key2, val2, key3, val3, ...);

my %hash = @array;
# %hash = ( key1 => val1, key2 => val2, key3 => val3, ...);

my @x = ('High' => 42, 'Low' => 11);
my %h = @x;

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper %h;

bless

#!/usr/bin/perl

package My::Mod;

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Indent = 0;

sub new { bless [] => shift }

sub frobnicate { Dumper(@_) }

package main;

use strict;
use warnings;

my $x = My::Mod->new;

# invoke instance method
print $x->frobnicate('High' => 42, 'Low' => 11);

# invoke class method
print My::Mod->frobnicate('High' => 42, 'Low' => 11);

# call sub frobnicate in package My::Mod
print My::Mod::frobnicate('High' => 42, 'Low' => 11);

new

Employee->new(name => 'Fred Flintstone', occupation => 'quarry worker');