How should I define 'static' subroutines in Perl?

Question

I'm used to work in Java, so perhaps this question is a Java-oriented Perl question... anyway, I've created a Person package using Moose.

Now, I would like to add a few subroutines which are "static", that is, they do not refer to a specific Person, but are still closely related to Person package. For example, sub sort_persons gets an array of Person objects.

In Java, I would simply declare such functions as static. But in Perl... what is the common way to do that?

p.s. I think the Perlish terminology for what I'm referring to is "class methods".

Answer 1

In perl class methods are not different from object methods. Both are just ordinary subroutines in some package. When a method is called as a class method, the first param contains the package name. That's what you can do:

package MyPkg;

sub class_method {
    my ($self, @params) = @_;
    die "used as an object method" if ref $self;
    # your code        
}