1) You may want to assign the result of something_clever_ret­urning_fn_reference() to *{$AUTOLOAD} so that you only run the something_clever... function the first time you need the sub, not every time. (I'm assuming that it'll return the same thing each time since you don't give it arguments)

2) If you've got an inheritence hierarchy then you may want to stick the sub into base class so that sibling classes don't have to do the AUTOLOAD thang either.

See AUTOLOAD & mod_perl memory for my ponderings and perrin's wisdom.