[OT] best way to determine existence of a function in a package

[Tim Sweetman]

Jonathan Rockway wrote:

>On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 11:16 +0000, Paul LeoNerd Evans wrote:
>  
>
>>You don't need a reference. I've always found that UNIVERSAL::can() works
>>just as well:
>>
>>  if( my $subref = UNIVERSAL::can( "Package", "function" ) ) {
>>     $subref->( args, here );
>>  }
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Everyone was quick to jump down your throat on this one, so I thought
>I'd explain why.
>
They're just like that.

"Whenever you want to on AUTOLOAD() its almost always better to create a 
generic method that takes the names you would have autoloaded as an 
extra argument rather than having methods created on the fly" - Damian 
Conway, "Perl Best Practices"

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=342804 # long discussion here

Also
http://template-toolkit.org/pipermail/templates/2007-June/009471.html

>  Consider this case:
>
>   package My::Module;
>   our $AUTOLOAD;
>   sub AUTOLOAD { return 42 if $AUTOLOAD =~ /forty_?two/ }
>  
>
How about

Local->can("function")

That'll work, I think, and, as far as I can see, should keep everyone happy.

ti'