Does that mean that it's safe to infer that perl will, if it thinks it appropriate, treat all literals/string constants as class names ?
No. It will only treat strings that start with a letter or underscore to be class names: 
$ perl -wE 'say "fred" -> can ("can")'
Use of uninitialized value in say at -e line 1.
$ perl -wE 'say "1fred" -> can ("can")'
Can't call method "can" without a package or object reference at -e li
+ne 1.
$ perl -wE 'say " " -> can ("can")'
Can't call method "can" without a package or object reference at -e li
+ne 1.
$ perl -wE 'say "f r e d" -> can ("can")'
Use of uninitialized value in say at -e line 1.
$

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But this "autocasting" is not surprising. Perl does that all the time. String can be numbers or regexes. Numbers can be strings. Floats can be integers, etc.

In reply to Re^5: Arrgh, can() appears to work for non-object !! by JavaFan
in thread Arrgh, can() appears to work for non-object !! by Bloodnok

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