/ 
load-0.03
River stage one • 8 direct dependents • 9 total dependents
/ load

NAME

load - runtime require of both modules and files

VERSION

This document describes version 0.01 of load, released Nov 24, 2002.

SYNOPSIS

	use 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'

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 elimates the need for this overhead and will just DWYM.

Rules

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 first in @INC and if that fails, we will try to find file.pm in @INC. If both fail, we die with the respective error messages.

NOTE

There is one very important distinction between load and require:

load does not allow you to use the indirect object syntax, whereas require does:

package MyPackage;
sub new { ... }

require Foo;

my $obj = new Foo(@args);

will call

my $obj = Foo->new(@args);

whereas

package MyPackage;
sub new { ... }

load Foo;
my $obj = new Foo(@args);

will call

my $obj = MyPackage::new(@args);

TODO

  • Allow for import() arguments and version checks

  • Allow a compile time equivalent of load (perhaps use load LWP)

AUTHOR

This module by Jos Boumans <kane@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT

This module is copyright (c) 2002 Jos Boumans <kane@cpan.org>. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.