In object oriented abstractions you often model real things as Perl classes. Unfortunately, the Perl classes have uglier names than the real things do. For example, I might model a customer using a Foo::Customer class. It would be useful if the Foo::Customer class knew what I would call its associated real thing. UNIVERSAL::moniker enables classes to make a good guess at what they would be called in the real world. Foo::User->moniker eq "user"; my $a = Big::Scary::Animal->new; $c->moniker eq "animal"; my $o = Cephalopod::Octopus->new; $o->plural_moniker eq "octopuses"; ============================================================================== NAME UNIVERSAL::moniker SYNOPSIS use UNIVERSAL::moniker; DESCRIPTION Class names in Perl often don't sound great when spoken, or look good when written in prose. For this reason, we tend to say things like "customer" or "basket" when we are referring to "My::Site::User::Customer" or "My::Site::Shop::Basket". We thought it would be nice if our classes knew what we would prefer to call them. This module will add a "moniker" (and "plural_moniker") method to "UNIVERSAL", and so to every class or module. moniker $ob->moniker; Returns the moniker for $ob. So, if $ob->isa("Big::Scary::Animal"), "moniker" will return "animal". plural_moniker $ob->plural_moniker; Returns the plural moniker for $ob. So, if $ob->isa("Cephalopod::Octopus"), "plural_moniker" will return "octopuses". (You need to install Lingua::EN::Inflect for this to work.) AUTHORS Marty Pauley , Tony Bowden , Elizabeth Mattijsen (Yes, 3 authors for such a small module!) COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2004 Kasei This program is free software; you can redistribute it under the same terms as Perl. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.