I've noticed several people (for example here) calling can method in this way: UNIVERSAL::can('Test', 'foo'). Doesn't this break inheritance? Imagine class Test be a subclass of SuperTest which implements method foo(). Will this code return true or false?

I tried a test, and UNIVERSAL::can is aware of inheritance. And I'm little bit confused now. UNIVERSAL::can('Test', 'foo') looks like a bad practice when compared to Test->can('foo'). Is it just a hack in UNIVERSAL::can that make it work in the 'bad' way or is it a planned feature? Is UNIVERSAL::can('Test', 'foo') used for performance reasons (to avoid traversing ISA hierarchy twice)?

In reply to Calling can method by gildir

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