If you're being a good little OO programmer, you shouldn't care if the subroutine in question is coming out of AUTOLOAD or not.

Now, Perl likes to break traditional rules (though you should know what the rules are and why they exist before you break them). You can use $object->can('meth') to check for this. can() will not return true for an AUTOLOAD method.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

There is an exception to this.
In your AUTOLOAD you can create an anonymous sub and install it in the symbol table by assigning to the typeglob for the value of $AUTOLOAD.
Try this as a very simple example (read don't use in production as is)

#! /usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

print "NOT LOADED\n" unless FOO->can('bar');
FOO->bar();
print "NOW LOADED\n" if FOO->can('bar');

package FOO;

use vars '$AUTOLOAD';

sub AUTOLOAD {
    no strict "refs";
    my $class = shift;
    print "LOADING $AUTOLOAD\n";
    *{$AUTOLOAD} = sub {print "USING CACHED VERSION";};
    return 
}
[download]

I guess I'm not a 'good little OO programmer' because these libraries are function-oriented rather than object-oriented, so iow I have no $object to use. btw, I can't seem to find any documentation on can()...Michael

Even if you're not using an object system, you can still make use of OO concepts.

can() is part of the UNIVERSAL class, which is the base for all objects in Perl. Even though you're not using the object system, you can still call it via PackageName->can('method').

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated