That's really weird. That's "the can method that isn't in the current class". Unless you've implemented a local "can" method, that's gonna be UNIVERSAL::can.

You mean unless the superclass has implemented a local can method.

In any case, that is of course half my point. You are correct that the SUPER::can in my original example without package statements is relative to main, which I didn't realize. But that doesn't change anything about my claim that it dispatches to UNIVERSAL::can with $_[ 0 ] as the first parameter, which I identified as the cause for the infinite loop.

For some reason, you are saying that this reasoning is incorrect, but you haven't provided an alternative explanation. You then stated that SUPER is relative to the current package, which causes problems with code, although you made no explicit connection between the two facts.

I still don't see how my explanation can be wrong. Assuming no local implementations of can, Bar->SUPER::can( 'foo' ) is equivalent to UNIVERSAL::can( Bar => 'foo' ), which will find Bar::foo if there is one, not the foo in a superclass of Bar, despite the adornment with SUPER:: in the wrong place. And if I'm in Bar::foo to begin with, and goto myself, that's an infinite loop.

Makeshifts last the longest.