Re: RFC 153 (v2) New pragma 'autoload' to load functions and modules on-demand

Tom Christiansen wrote:
> 
> >Mostly harmless. Right before raising the famous "Can't locate method
> >..." error, Perl should check to see if C<autoload> is in effect. If so,
> >it should read the C<autoload.conf> config file and ...
> 
> ***LINEARLY READ A FLAT FILE!!?!?!***

I didn't get into the guts too much intentionally. Surely a dbm would be
a much better implementation for an almost infinite number of reasons
(no duplicates, fast search, etc, etc). To do this transparently it
would be nice if Perl itself cached autoload.conf into a dbm on startup,
based on the modification time of the dbm vs. the flat file. But this
may add too much overhead and the equivalent of a "newaliases" program
may be the best way to go.

If you think this is important enough to add I can unfreeze it and do
so, but I'm running really short on time. But rest assured this issue is
on my mind...

-Nate