The easy way to explain this is to consider a typical constructor.

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $data = {};
    bless $data, $class;
    return $data;
}
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Now, why is the first argument to the constructor called $class instead of $self? Because when the constructor is called properly, the first argument to it is the name of the class (as a string), not an object. This is because you haven't created the object yet!

$package = WM::Install::Table::ArchiveTbl->get_pkgname();
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The previous line of code cannot work with the current structure of your AUTOLOAD because the first argument will be the classname and not a hashref. Either call the method from an instance of the class or recode your AUTOLOAD.

Cheers,
Ovid

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Ovid, not sure that hackdaddy has got it wrong. His code is the AUTOLOAD sub, not the constructor. I presume he will be supplying his own new sub so that AUTOLOAD will not be called on construction.

More importantly, he needs to declare $AUTOLOAD in package namespace, with

use vars qw($AUTOLOAD);
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or

our $AUTOLOAD;
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The rest seems to go through use strict 'refs'OK.

Update: Ovid I am humbled! It's interesting how staring at a piece of code can lead you to wrong conclusions (in my case exacerbated by lack of sleep and coffee).

It also shows what a snarfy beast AUTOLOAD can be. I've written pseudo-methods in AUTOLOAD myself, but usually solved problems like hackdaddy's by stepping through with the debugger.

Read through his code and error message again. hackdaddy already has $AUTOLOAD declared properly, otherwise the first method call would fail, but according to hackdaddy, it's successful. However, read through the text of the actual error message.

Can't use string ("WM::Install::Table::ArchiveTbl") as a HASH ref whil
+e "strict refs" in use 
at /u08/pkg/wms/wmcmtools/modules/WM/Install/Table/ArchiveTbl.pm line 
+192.
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Now look at first few lines of the autoload.

sub AUTOLOAD {
    my ($self, $newval) = @_;
    
    $AUTOLOAD =~ /.*::get(_\w+)/
        and $self->_accessible($1)
        and return $self->{$1};
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As you can see, the return statement (return $self->{$1}) is attempting to use $self as a hashref. Since the error messsage shows that the programmers is trying to use the package name as a hashref, we clearly have the package name and not the object being passed as the first argument to AUTOLOAD. I was using a generic constructor to illustrate how the first argument could be a package name instead of an object, as expected.

Cheers,
Ovid

PS: I'm also a Terry Pratchett fan (I'm assuming that's what your nick refers to).

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Best regards, and Terry Pratchett is great
perl -le "s==*F=e=>y~\*martinF~stronat~=>s~[^\w]~~g=>chop,print"