On Fri, Aug 11, 2000 at 06:22:46AM +1000, Damian Conway wrote:
> I don't *dislike* your proposal, except that it interposes another layer of
> indirection on a process that is already too slow.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>
> > =head2 $AUTOLOAD
> >
> > While we're at it, it *may* be a good idea to remove the global
> > $AUTOLOAD variable and instead pass it as the first parameter of the
> > AUTOLOAD subroutine call. For: general global drought, the fact that
> > perlsub's argument "because, er, well, just because, that's why..." is
> > a bit weak. Against: makes AUTOLOAD more complicated, breaking the
> > "subroutine parameters end up as @_" paradigm (apparently).
>
> This, I really like.
But it will slow things down. Firstly because it must be added to the stack
then removed inside the sub.
I don't see any issue keeping $AUTOLOAD as the way the sub name is passed.
> > =head2 UNIVERSAL->can
> >
> > This proposal has the added bonus that the UNIVERSAL->can method (or
> > whatever replaces it) will now work with AUTOLOAD-ed methods, whereas
> > in Perl 5 it used to fail.
>
> But how would it know whether a particular AUTOLOAD can handle the requested
> method without calling that AUTOLOAD and seeing what it returns? Oh, I get
> it: it *would* call every AUTOLOAD it found until one of them returned
> something? If so, the RFC ought to explain this explicitly.
But you cannot do that as the AUTOLOAD subs may not just be defining the sub,
they may be doing the work.
And ->can can already be used with AUTOLOADed methods if there is a stub
in place.
Graham.
