Just as an aside ... you will from time to time encounter some code (e.g. in CPAN...) which is designed to allow you to designate the subroutine to be called using either a string or a code-reference.   The code in question is designed so that, if given a string, it treats that string as a method name, and it tries to call that method against some object that has also been provided.   As usual, “TMTOWTDI.™”