AUTOLOAD (was: PHP sucks...)

[Tim Sweetman]

chromatic wrote:
> On Friday 12 January 2007 11:50, Uri Guttman wrote:
> 
> 
>>how could you make them work if the AUTOLOAD decides on the fly whether
>>to support a method or not? AUTOLOAD has to do the method work itself
>>and it does not have an api just for testing if a method exists. you
>>could write an AUTOLOAD that even checks its args as to whether to
>>implement a method or die and can() will never be able to work around
>>that. AUTOLOAD would need another api which is called by can() so it can
>>return true/false there. maybe call it AUTOEXISTS :).
> 
> 
> Fun fact: can() is a method.  You can override methods in Perl!

Hey, you should know better than that, you wrote the UNIVERSAL::can 
module, to get around the problem of people saying

   if (UNIVERSAL::can($object..) { ... }

and getting the wrong answer (or, at least, not the answer they wanted).

(though as a longtime mod_perl developer, I get distinctly nervous about 
modules which redefine things in the UNIVERSAL package).

> I presume anyone smart enough to write code in AUTOLOAD() which knows which 
> methods to support is smart enough to figure out how to share that same logic 
> with a custom can() method [...]

Simple use of AUTOLOAD is trivial.

Dealing with AUTOLOAD's effects on inheritance, the can method, and 
other subtleties is enough to make experts go "hmm", consider, talk a 
lot, write utility modules, and debate tickets 
(http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=UNIVERSAL-can)

Damian's "Best Practices" say: don't use AUTOLOAD.

I never use it, and recommend people against its use, because once 
inheritance and cans are in the mix, the situation becomes extremely 
unclear.

ti