This is what I was referring to in my other writeup in this thread

A real life example cut and paste from a production module :

sub AUTOLOAD
{
   my ( $self, $arg ) = @_;

   no strict 'refs';

   (my $method = $AUTOLOAD ) =~ s/^.*:://;

  
   if ( exists $self->{_data}->{$method} )
   {
     *{$AUTOLOAD} = sub {
                          my ( $self, $arg ) = @_;
                          if ( defined $arg )
                          {
                             $self->{_data}->{$method} = $arg;
                          }
                          return $self->{_data}->{$method};
                        };
   }
   else
   {
      croak qq%Can't locate object method $method via package % . __PA
+CKAGE__ ;
   }

   goto &{$AUTOLOAD};
}
[download]

/J\