README 864 B

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  1. perl-Class-ISA
  2. Suppose you have a class (like Food::Fish::Fishstick) that is derived,
  3. via its @ISA, from one or more superclasses (as Food::Fish::Fishstick
  4. is from Food::Fish, Life::Fungus, and Chemicals), and some of those
  5. superclasses may themselves each be derived, via its @ISA, from one
  6. or more superclasses (as above).
  7. When, then, you call a method in that class ($fishstick->calories),
  8. Perl first searches there for that method, but if it's not there, it
  9. goes searching in its superclasses, and so on, in a depth-first (or
  10. maybe "height-first" is the word) search. In the above example, it'd
  11. first look in Food::Fish, then Food, then Matter, then Life::Fungus,
  12. then Life, then Chemicals.
  13. This library, Class::ISA, provides functions that return that list
  14. -- the list (in order) of names of classes Perl would search to find
  15. a method, with no duplicates.