Instead of inheritance, why not use delegation? It sounds more like that's what you're looking for. Make your B object contain an A object--then in your AUTOLOAD function delegate certain methods to be called on the A object.

Like this: 

    package A;

    sub new {
        my $class = shift;
        bless {}, $class;
    }

    sub doit { print "doit in A\n"; }

    package B;

    sub new {
        my $class = shift;
        bless { a => new A }, $class;
    }

    sub AUTOLOAD {
        my $self = shift;

        ## Your debugging message.
        print "autoload in B, called as $AUTOLOAD\n";

        return if $AUTOLOAD =~ /::DESTROY$/;

        ## Remove the name of your package.
        $AUTOLOAD =~ s/^B:://;

        ## Call the method on your A object.
        $self->{a}->$AUTOLOAD(@_);
    }

    package main;

    my $b = B->new;
    $b->doit;

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Sometimes a strategy like delegation works better than inheritance, particularly when you're trying to "catch" every method call to an object. Another option might be using a tied object, similarly to how I used it in Tie: Creating special objects.

In reply to Re: How to call AUTOLOAD before @ISA? by btrott
in thread How to call AUTOLOAD before @ISA? by ZZamboni

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