Why should you tell it to?

When I write an AUTOLOAD method, I'll typically dynamically decide at runtime whether or not I really want to handle it. Anyone who assumes that I'll handle their method because I have an AUTOLOAD is more often wrong than right.

Unless we coordinate on how to declare methods, there is no good answer to that.

Furthermore I am uncomfortable with encouraging people to roll their own can because when I use it, I darned well expect it to work right and they might get it wrong. Do they handle multiple inheritance properly? Do they return a subroutine that can be called directly? (Returning the AUTOLOAD won't work.) Do they return the same subroutine multiple times for the same class?

Yes, I have written code which would break if you change any of the above properties.

Anyone who cannot be trusted to think of all of this shouldn't be overwriting globally defined methods which could be called by other people who expect that things work properly.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Symbol table globbing from object refs by tilly
in thread Symbol table globbing from object refs by nothingmuch

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