zwon,

Thanks for helping me think around this problem. I looked at all the @ISA = statements and require statements and saw exactly what you described.

Adding use IO::Socket::INET; to my code did not fix the problem but fortunately I had already stumbled across the answer.

In trying to execute your quick check on my platform I accidentally typed in the following:

perl -MNet::FTP -MIO::Socket::INET -e 'print Net::FTP::A->can("new") || "can not", "\n"'

and was surprised to get the answer

can not
[download]

Notice that I had omitted the ::A in the first -M switch. When I corrected the check to be exactly as you typed it, I got the expected result. Adding use IO::Socket::INET; to the existing code made it just like the mistyped check. That is, using the packages Net::FTP and IO::Socket::INET but not explicitly using Net::FTP::A.

So, by adding the two lines:

use Net::FTP::A;
use IO::Socket::INET;
[download]

to my code I avoided the runtime error.

Thanks,
Cefu

P.S. I'm still confused as to why something I'm doing during processing could selectively trigger this behavior. Is this a bug that I should report to the Net::FTP author or am I doing something extraordinary to trigger this condition?