in reply to Re: Arrgh, can() appears to work for non-object !!
in thread Arrgh, can() appears to work for non-object !!

TFT ysth,

Yes, I know both can and isa work on both classes and objects, the thing is how can fred be a class ? Shouldn't I have expected a method can not found for class fred, did you forget to load fred ? type of error ?

A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))

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Re^3: Arrgh, can() appears to work for non-object !!
by ysth (Canon) on Jan 07, 2009 at 11:32 UTC
    No, since nothing about a class is required. It need have no methods, @ISA, or anything else, so there's nothing missing to provoke a "forget to load" kind of error. Even the package statement isn't required, since you can declare anything using a fully qualified name if you want.
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[reply]
      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 ?

      A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))
[reply]
        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.
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[d/l]

        No. That's only true for a Literal in Literal->method an only if method is in UNIVERSAL.

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