You've already been tipped about can, but it seems like you missed that it returns a reference, which is exactly what you want to store.

  my $m = $self->{method};
  $self->{funcs}{$m} = $self->can($m);
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Then you use

  if (my $code = $self->{funcs}{$self->{method}}) {
    $self->$code(@params);
  }
  else {
    die "...";
  }
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Why don't you do this check in the constructur, btw?

Note that this isn't equivalent to   $self->{funcs}{$m} = sub { $self->$m(@_) }; You'd get in trouble with the closure solution if you ever decide to clone your object. Then you'd still be using your old object.

Hope this helps,
ihb