Thus it was written in the epistle of Dave Rolsky,
> On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Nathan Wiger wrote:
>
> > There's the big problem of overlapping function names. If I say:
> >
> > $name = param('name');
> >
> > I probably mean "use CGI". But maybe there's some other module that has
> > param() also? What if I really mean "use CGI::Minimal"?
>
> Here's a gross thought (for implementors at least ;)
>
> If it sees
>
> use CGI qw( param header );
>
> the autoloader could look for a module which implements the 'CGI'
> interface and has those two functions. This could be CGI or CGI::Minimal.
> Then there needs to be a way to figure out which to load. Hopefully the
> smallest/quickest.
It appears to me that there's a focus problem here. After all, if I want to
use CGI or CGI::Minimal, I can already do that. The auto-autoloading, unless
I am sorely mistaken (which is quite possible :-), is for the purpose of
moving things out of the core and yet allowing them to act like they are
still in (a process which has been decried as basically useless when it is
simply limited to things such as time(), but which might be more significant
if it also related to major pieces of functionality such as formats or "complex
regexen" or some such). If that is the case, then the name conflict will be
solved easily. Only those things which are core functionality, such as time()
or print() will be on the list by default any any mechanism which adds to the
list can fail on conflict.
I don't think we want a mechanism which, when I type parm() (meaning to have
typed param()) goes out and searches CPAN, downloads and installs Blarg::Foo
which has parm() defined and use it :-).
Ted
--
Ted Ashton ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), Info Sys, Southern Adventist University
==========================================================
War can protect; it cannot create.
-- Whitehead, Alfred North
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Deep thoughts to be found at http://www.southern.edu/~ashted
