What are common pitfalls or gotchas with AUTOLOAD and DESTROY?

AUTOLOAD and DESTROY are powerful Perl features that allow for dynamic method resolution and object destruction, respectively. However, they come with several common pitfalls that developers should be aware of:

Performance Overhead: Using AUTOLOAD can introduce performance issues, especially if methods are called frequently, as it adds an extra lookup step.
Non-existent Methods: If AUTOLOAD is not correctly implemented, it may lead to unexpected errors when methods that do not exist are called.
Destructor Behavior: The DESTROY method is called when an object is being destroyed. If not implemented correctly, it may lead to resource leaks or incomplete cleanup.
Multiple Inheritance: In cases of multiple inheritance, special care must be taken when using DESTROY to ensure that destructors from all classes are called appropriately.

Here’s an example to illustrate potential pitfalls:


        <![CDATA[
        package MyClass;

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        sub AUTOLOAD {
            our $AUTOLOAD;
            (my $method = $AUTOLOAD) =~ s/.*:://; # get method name

            # Check if method exists
            if ($method eq 'desired_method') {
                print "Method called: $method\n";
            } else {
                die "Undefined method: $method";
            }
        }

        sub DESTROY {
            print "Object is being destroyed\n";
            # Cleanup code goes here
        }
        ]]>

What are common pitfalls or gotchas with AUTOLOAD and DESTROY?

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What are common pitfalls or gotchas with AUTOLOAD and DESTROY?

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