Module::Load - runtime require of both modules and files
- use Module::Load;
- my $module = 'Data:Dumper';
- load Data::Dumper; # loads that module
- load 'Data::Dumper'; # ditto
- load $module # tritto
- my $script = 'some/script.pl'
- load $script;
- load 'some/script.pl'; # use quotes because of punctuations
- load thing; # try 'thing' first, then 'thing.pm'
- load CGI, ':standard' # like 'use CGI qw[:standard]'
load
eliminates the need to know whether you are trying to require
either a file or a module.
If you consult perldoc -f require
you will see that require will
behave differently when given a bareword or a string.
In the case of a string, require assumes you are wanting to load a
file. But in the case of a bareword, it assumes you mean a module.
This gives nasty overhead when you are trying to dynamically require
modules at runtime, since you will need to change the module notation
(Acme::Comment
) to a file notation fitting the particular platform
you are on.
load
eliminates the need for this overhead and will just DWYM.
load
has the following rules to decide what it thinks you want:
If the argument has any characters in it other than those matching
\w
, :
or ', it must be a file
If the argument matches only [\w:'], it must be a module
If the argument matches only \w
, it could either be a module or a
file. We will try to find file.pm
first in @INC
and if that
fails, we will try to find file
in @INC. If both fail, we die with
the respective error messages.
Because of a bug in perl (#19213), at least in version 5.6.1, we have
to hardcode the path separator for a require on Win32 to be /, like
on Unix rather than the Win32 \
. Otherwise perl will not read its
own %INC accurately double load files if they are required again, or
in the worst case, core dump.
Module::Load
cannot do implicit imports, only explicit imports.
(in other words, you always have to specify explicitly what you wish
to import from a module, even if the functions are in that modules'
@EXPORT
)
Thanks to Jonas B. Nielsen for making explicit imports work.
Please report bugs or other issues to <bug-module-load@rt.cpan.org<gt>.
This module by Jos Boumans <kane@cpan.org>.
This library is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.