I use AUTOLOAD as a debugging technique to catch as yet un-written code references. It goes away in the production version. The code references come from a parse tree produced as part of a compiler. So from my point of view, this comes down to things that are admittedly cosmetic, but as I pointed out I am somewhat helplessly compulsive hence the problem. Is the un 'Strict' performance of $main:: going away or were you referring to some thing else?

--hsm