First of all, thanks! This is indeed what I want to achieve. The UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD sub will of course do more checking than just this to implement what I want.

However, like you said, this may not be a good idea. What if more people start using this scheme? Then things will break immediately. I'm pretty sure I can catch that by checking if UNIVERSAL::AUTOLOAD has already been defined (right?).

nevertheless this may just be the push in the right direction I need