Module::Load(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Module::Load(3)
NAME
Module::Load - runtime require of both modules and files
SYNOPSIS
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]'
DESCRIPTION
"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.
Rules
"load" has the following rules to decide what it thinks you want:
o If the argument has any characters in it other than those matching
"\w", ":" or "'", it must be a file
o If the argument matches only "[\w:']", it must be a module
o 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.
Caveats
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)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Jonas B. Nielsen for making explicit imports work.
BUG REPORTS
Please report bugs or other issues to <bug-module-load AT rt.org<gt>.
AUTHOR
This module by Jos Boumans <kane AT cpan.org>.
COPYRIGHT
This library is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.16.3 2013-02-01 Module::Load(3)