autoloading methods

Just a little php question. I know its not the place to ask but I will be thankful if you can help me. How does method autoloading works in php. for example if I call $lang->hello; if the method hello does not exists then some other function can take this argument and return a value according to that. For example make a lookup in the data base etc. Thanks in perl I would do something like this. package Dictionary; sub new {my $self=shift; return bless {}, $self;}; sub AUTOLOAD{ my $self=shift; my $name=$AUTOLOAD; $name=~s/.*://; return "You tried to access $name"; } package main; my $obj=Dictionary->new(); print $obj->test; #this will print You tried to access test -- Atif Ghaffar I*Net/Unix Consultant -------------------------------------- Internet : http://aghaffar.developer.ch WAP : http://www.wapdrive.net/aghaffar Email : atif@developer.ch