Thirdly TheDamian already wrote Class::Multimethods and I've not heard complaints about what he did there.

I think that's because no-one thinks of multimethods. :-) I seriously doubt that it's been used much, though it should because it solves a lot of problems.

Now, the reason your module made me think of multimethods is that you're essentially defining multimethods, but from the opposite side. Where Class::MultiMethods allows you to define a series of targets and C::MM goes ahead and figures out what to do based on signatures, Class::AutoloadCAN allows you to specify at the class-level whether or not this class wants to do something about the request. By returning undef, you're indicating to the dispatcher that this is not the correct place for the given signature (which includes the method name).

Personally, I think that the multimethod route is more maintainable, but that more people will reach for AutoloadCAN because it looks more like something they know. It's a screwdriver and not a tricorder to their hammer. :-)

My wife's blog

In reply to Re^3: RFC: Class::AutoloadCAN by dragonchild
in thread RFC: Class::AutoloadCAN by tilly

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