in reply to Re: -isa() and -can() asymmetry
in thread -isa() and -can() asymmetry

It's not an issue of the utility, but a question of why one would need it and the other would not.

I dunno, but from what I've read it sounds like isa() was built for speed, while can() was built to work no matter what sort of underhanded trickery you might have performed on @ISA. With any luck someone better versed in OO Perl will step in now and give us a deeper explanation of the topic.

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Re (tilly) 3: -isa() and -can() asymmetry
by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 03, 2001 at 23:14 UTC
    My guess is that both were built for speed, but can could work off of the same method lookup cache that Perl uses for regular method lookups, so accuracy came for free.

    Now why didn't they just bite the bullet and make isa accurate as well? I don't know, because if I was going to offer the feature I would make accuracy a priority. :-(

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