phpman > man > autouse(3perl)

NAME
    autouse - postpone load of modules until a function is used

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

DESCRIPTION
    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.

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

    *   Break the execution of your program if the module you "autouse"d has some initialization
        which it expects to be done early.

    *   hide bugs in your code since important checks (like correctness of prototypes) is moved from
        compile time to runtime. In particular, if the prototype you specified on "autouse" line is
        wrong, you will not find it out until the corresponding function is executed. This will be
        very unfortunate for functions which are not always called (note that for such functions
        "autouse"ing gives biggest win, for a workaround see below).

    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.

AUTHOR
    Ilya Zakharevich (ilya AT math.edu)

SEE ALSO
    perl(1).