autouse(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide autouse(3pm)

autouse - postpone load of modules until a function is used

  use autouse 'Carp' => qw(carp croak);
  carp "this carp was predeclared and autoused ";

If the module "Module" is already loaded, then the declaration

  use autouse 'Module' => qw(func1 func2($;$));

is equivalent to

  use Module qw(func1 func2);

if "Module" defines func2() with prototype "($;$)", and func1() has no prototypes. (At least if "Module" uses "Exporter"'s "import", otherwise it is a fatal error.)

If the module "Module" is not loaded yet, then the above declaration declares functions func1() and func2() in the current package. When these functions are called, they load the package "Module" if needed, and substitute themselves with the correct definitions.

Using "autouse" will move important steps of your program's execution from compile time to runtime. This can

To alleviate the second problem (partially) it is advised to write your scripts like this:

  use Module;
  use autouse Module => qw(carp($) croak(&$));
  carp "this carp was predeclared and autoused ";

The first line ensures that the errors in your argument specification are found early. When you ship your application you should comment out the first line, since it makes the second one useless.

Ilya Zakharevich (ilya@math.ohio-state.edu)

perl(1).

2022-02-19 perl v5.34.1