Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the advanced topic of component development in PerlNET. Every program or component we write in PerlNET represents a .NET class. The executable assemblies are implicitly provided with the Main function as their entry point.

To implement classes that are fully compliant with .NET, we use either .NET types or Mixed types. In both cases, the resulting classes will be non-sealed. We are able to inherit from existing .NET classes and implement .NET interfaces. In addition, Mixed types may store Perl references as private instance data in a blessed hash.

An exception-handling mechanism is available for all PerlNET components, including these implementing Pure Perl types. We use the die function to throw an exception and the eval block to catch exceptions.