Does the PHP autoloader function also work with static method calls?

Question

I slightly remember that autoload worked with the new statement. Now how about when I have several utility classes and I want to autoload these? And I only use

Answer 1

I had one issue with this where a very minor syntax error gave a pretty unclear error message where it looked like __autoload() wasn't being called.

SomeClass:callStaticMethod(); // Doesn't call autoload for "SomeClass"

SomeClass::callStaticMethod(); // Successfully calls autoload for "SomeClass"

PHP strangely interprets the single ":" (instead of the correct double "::") as nothing. It treats callStaticMethod() as a global method call, meaning it skips the __autoload.