note Anonymous Monk <p> I don't get that, even though your module doesn't return an object ( compared to [mod://Attribute::Constructor] ), trace gets called if the phase is BEGIN <c>$ perl -le " eval qq/use Junk;/; print Junk->new " Junk.pm(22) called with [Junk] Junk.pm(22): returning [ Junk=HASH(0x3f8d1c) ] 1 $ cat Junk.pm package Junk; use Attribute::Handlers; #~ sub TRACE :ATTR(CODE,CHECK) { #~ sub TRACE :ATTR(CODE,INIT,CHECK) { #~ sub TRACE :ATTR(CODE,INIT) { sub TRACE :ATTR(CODE,BEGIN) { #~ sub TRACE :ATTR(CODE) { my ($pkg, $sym, $ref, $attr, $data, $phase, $file, $line) = @_; *{ $sym } = sub { warn "$file($line) called with [@_]\n"; my( @rc )= &$ref; warn "$file($line): returning [ @rc ]\n"; } } sub new :TRACE { my $instance = shift; my $class = ref($instance) || $instance; my $self = {}; return bless($self, $class); } 1;</c> 1000101 1000192 2