actually, while the method itself might insist on a class name rather than an object, can() won't know that. so $self->can('do_something'); will correctly determine whether or not you can do it.

your situation is made messier if you need to know which of its parents can do it; but that's OK, because you can call ->can() on a string that is the name of a class. Here's a one-liner to prove it.

perl -e 'package It; sub doit{return pop}; $foo="It"; print($foo->can(
+"doit")?"y":"n")'
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incidentally, i would recommend re-writing the method so that, if given an object rather than a class name, it gets the class name by ref'ing the object. e.g.,

sub class_method { 
  my $proto = shift; 
  $class = ref($proto) || $proto;

  # do stuff ...

}
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because there is almost never a reason not to.

.

update (about perldoc UNIVERSAL: yes, I saw that too; and i almost let it stop me from trying. But then i tried it anyway.

and it is OK to doubt me, brother; doubt builds faith, and besides, i am only a man, after all

.