See the following:

#! /usr/bin/env perl

package Foo;
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';

sub AUTOLOAD {
    (my $method = our $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*:://;
    return if $method eq 'DESTROY';
    
    say "Foo::$method was called";
    
    die "bad method $method\n" if $method ~~ [qw/troz narf/];
        
    if ($method eq 'day') {
        return +(localtime)[3];
    } elsif ($method eq 'month') {
        return +(localtime)[4] + 1;
    }
}

package main;
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';

say( Foo->day );
say( Foo->troz );

__END__

Foo::day was called
25
Foo::troz was called
bad method troz
[download]

Hi, and many thanks (with a belated Merry Xmas) for the reply. Wish to address it in point form:

1. Using strictures: I did use those strictures (written outside the braces for the package MyDate). My bad for not reproducing it.. So I don't think its about any error being generated because i didn't declare those strictures. Using print rather than say didn't make any difference either.

2. Coderefs: I'm not quite sure what you mean by me not assigning a coderef? I defined the subroutines within my if statements.. so if $method was 'day' wouldn't &$method be calling &day? I did get the desired outputs from the subroutines.. so it seems to me like that wasn't a problem either.

3. Defining subs: I was learning AUTOLOAD (from Intermediate Perl) in the context of dynamically defining new subroutines, while your code only returns the desired value. I presume that means that if I write

say( Foo->day );
say( Foo->month );
say( Foo->day );
[download]

I would expect the output

Foo::day was called
26
Foo::month was called
12
26
[download]

rather than the actual output

Foo::day was called
26
Foo::month was called
12
Foo::day was called
26
[download]

Actually I get the impression that AUTOLOAD isn't even being called. Changing the words in my grep statement or writing if ( $method eq "dayz") {...} doesn't produce any errors while changing the name of my subroutine does. So erm...:S why?

ianyappy:

One thing you have to understand about the statement  sub name { ... } is that it always executes at compile time if it is not in a string eval (i.e., is in a block  eval or is a nested subroutine definition in another subroutine). So your impression that "AUTOLOAD isn't even being called" is correct. See example below.

>perl -wMstrict -le
"{ package Foo;
   use warnings;  use strict;
   our $AUTOLOAD;
   sub AUTOLOAD {
     eval { sub foo { return 'FOO'; } };
     sub bar { return 'BAR'; }
     print qq{AUTOLOADing '$AUTOLOAD'};
     no strict 'refs';
     *$AUTOLOAD = sub { return uc $AUTOLOAD };
     goto &$AUTOLOAD;
     }
   }
 ;;
 print 'foo? ', exists &Foo::foo;  print Foo->foo;
 print 'bar? ', exists &Foo::bar;  print Foo->bar;
 print 'baz? ', exists &Foo::baz;  print Foo->baz;
 print 'baz? ', exists &Foo::baz;  print Foo->baz;
"
foo? 1
FOO
bar? 1
BAR
baz?
AUTOLOADing 'Foo::baz'
FOO::BAZ
baz? 1
FOO::BAZ
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In this example,  Foo::foo and  Foo::bar already exist at runtime, so  AUTOLOAD is never called for them. The first time  Foo::baz is called,  AUTOLOAD is called and defines the subroutine and also executes the just-defined subroutine. When  Foo::baz is called subsequently, it exists.

Update: To pound the point about nested subroutine definitions even further into the ground, remove the  sub bar { return 'BAR'; } statement from the  AUTOLOAD function in the example above and replace the  eval statement with
    eval { sub foo { sub bar { return 'BAR'; }  return 'FOO'; } };
or the even more pathological
    eval { sub foo { return 'FOO';  sub bar { return 'BAR'; } } };
The results of execution are the same.

1: When I only add strictures, as in the following code:
Read more... (1174 Bytes)
I get the following:

String found where operator expected at 879141.pl line 6, near "say "G
+oing into AUTOLOAD""
        (Do you need to predeclare say?)
String found where operator expected at 879141.pl line 9, near "Carp::
+croak "Invalid method: $method.""
        (Do you need to predeclare Carp::croak?)
syntax error at 879141.pl line 6, near "say "Going into AUTOLOAD""
syntax error at 879141.pl line 9, near "Carp::croak "Invalid method: $
+method.""
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at 879141.pl line 26.
[download]

The first error tells me that say needs to be imported, the second that Carp isn't loaded. If nothing was printed for you, then that package didn't have warnings enabled.

2: Your code looked like this: if (foo) { eval { sub bar {} } }. You were defining a sub inside the AUTOLOAD sub, and then executing that code by name, instead of assigning to another variable a coderef, like $code = sub { ... }; and then later calling it or using goto on it.

3: Notice that the "was called" statement is executed unconditionally, after it's determined that DESTROY wasn't called.

Actually I get the impression that AUTOLOAD isn't even being called.

It looks like you're trying to juggle the differences between the code I provided and the code your provided, and then trying to map them to the actual code you're running. This isn't working.