Juerd wrote:
>  I think there exists an even simpler way to avoid any mess involved.
>  Instead of letting AUTOLOAD receive and pass on arguments, and instead
>  of letting AUTOLOAD call the loaded sub, why not have AUTOLOAD do its
>  thing, and then have *perl* call the sub?
>      sub AUTOLOAD ($w) { return our &::($w) := get_subref_for $w }

I like that.  Makes it more consistent with the AUTOSCALAR, etc methods -
returning a reference to the result (variable ref/code ref/sub name) rather
than the actual result (variable value/calling the sub).

After all, presumably the compiler might sometimes call the AUTOLOAD at
compile time; to get its signature.  So, for instance, you could AUTOLOAD
all the methods you optionally export, which are all pulled in at once when
a module imports a function and tries to use it in some code (as the
signature will need to be checked then).  I was going to bring that up
next, but I think this has already answered it.

Sam.