Selfloader - testimonies or potential uses?

princepawn has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

With knitted brows, I have been starting at the docs for SelfLoader for 10 minutes now. And I still cannot imagine when I would want this sort of functionality.

Basically, the module autoloads subroutines which are defined in the __DATA__ section of a module.

So, maybe someone could share a time when they found this module useful? Or could share a time when you could imagine this module to be useful.

Carter's compass: I know I'm on the right track when by deleting something, I'm adding functionality

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Re: Selfloader - testimonies or potential uses? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jun 04, 2007 at 15:56 UTC
The idea is to delay the compilation of functions until they are used. This could be useful when few of the functions are actually executed. For example, CGI uses functionality similar to SelfLoader because most of CGI's users use only a fraction of the functions it provides. The savings are magnified since CGI is used in an environment where it can be loaded at great frequency. I wonder how much benefit it provides, if any. Its effect on the method cache could be costly.	[reply]
Re^2: Selfloader - testimonies or potential uses? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jun 04, 2007 at 17:00 UTC
I wonder how much benefit it provides, if any. Its effect on the method cache could be costly. If you're in an environment where startup time is the largest component of the work, SelfLoader might be an advantage. (In terms of CGI programming, it's very difficult for me to believe that even loading and compiling all of CGI.pm would take more time than performing network IO, but with short-lived processes, the method cache misses wouldn't be as painful.)	[reply]
Re: Selfloader - testimonies or potential uses? by princepawn (Parson) on Jun 04, 2007 at 17:06 UTC
oh, something else to add to my list of lazy loaders Carter's compass: I know I'm on the right track when by deleting something, I'm adding functionality	[reply]


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