Are you aware of everything that the AUTOLOAD has done with those 6 packages? Every constant in ABC, every method in ABC, all are inherited by XYZ::ABC::Scalar. Is this really what you want? Furthermore ABC looks like an example of the God module anti-pattern. That is a code smell right there.

Finally you are obviously confused about how this works because you don't know whether you need to both import AUTOLOAD and inherit. The answer is that if you don't have an import method in ABC.pm, then the use statement does nothing and should be removed. If you have an import that will export AUTOLOAD, then the AUTOLOAD written for ABC.pm will fail to work in another package because it will be looking at $ABC::AUTOLOAD for the requested function, but Perl will put it in $XYZ::ABC::Scalar::AUTOLOAD instead and you won't find it properly. Therefore the use should definitely be removed.

A much cleaner solution is at the end to have something that looks like this:

# Presumably you have 6 packages listed in this list
for my $package (qw(
    XYZ::ABC::Scalar
)) {
    $package =~ /(Scalar|Array|Hash)(::NoLock)?/
        or die "Tie type of '$package' not understood";
    my $kind = $1;
    my $nolock = $2;

    no strict 'refs';
    *{$package . uc("::TIE$kind")} = sub {
        my $class = shift;
        my $ssh = shift; # Scalar/Hash/Array
        return bless $ssh, $class;
    };

    # These two do nothing.
    *{"$package\::DESTROY"} = sub {};
    *{"$package\::UNTIE"} = sub {};

    # And now the rest.
    my @functions = qw(FETCH STORE);
    if ($kind eq "Array") {
        push @functions, qw(
            FETCHSIZE STORESIZE EXTEND CLEAR
            POP PUSH SHIFT UNSHIFT SPLICE
        );
    }
    elsif ($kind eq "Hash") {
        push @functions, qw(
            STORE DELETE CLEAR EXISTS
            FIRSTKEY NEXTKEY SCALAR
        );
    }

    for my $function (@functions) {
        my $subname = join "_", ($nolock ? "abca" : "abc"), lc($kind) 
+. lc($function);
        *{"$package\::$function"} = \&$subname;
    }
}
[download]

This will create the 6 packages, set all of the right methods, not create any unwanted additional methods, and gets rid of the overhead of running the AUTOLOAD every time you want to access one of the tied methods. Also by moving logic out of the AUTOLOAD you make the logic that remains in the AUTOLOAD clearer. Plus if anyone has code that uses the can method for introspection, it will work on those packages.

The moral? AUTOLOAD is a big sledgehammer. Don't swing it unless you need to, and then swing it carefully.

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