I'd like to make a quiet protest on behalf of all the programmers who come into a project 4 years into it and who have to deal with the abysmal dreck that is AUTOLOAD. I have never once, and I mean never, have come across an AUTOLOAD whose existence was justified. Ever. Most of the time, it's an attempt to circumvent proper encapsulation and is a perfect example of false Laziness. Something like: 
sub AUTOLOAD
{
    my ($self, $method_name) = @_;
    $self->{$method_name} = $_[0] @_;
    return $self->{$method_name};
}

[download]
Why is this bad? Oh, let me count the ways!
  1. No checking, either compile or runtime, for typos.
  2. You can create members on the fly.
  3. $self->FooBar and $self->foobar are different.
  4. There is a much cleaner WTDI, using a base class that will receive a list of attributes to use and auto-generate your getters/setters/mutators for you. This option even has the benefit of being self-documenting and provides runtime checking for typos.
Would someone please give me a place, in production code, where AUTOLOAD shines over proper decomposition?

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

In reply to Re: goto and AUTOLOADed methods by dragonchild
in thread goto and AUTOLOADed methods by fergal

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