http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=57484

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

Let's say I've loaded a class during compile/run time, and sometime during my program, I want to re-load that class because its source has changed, and use it some more. I doubt it would work, but I tried to put a

 use PeopleClass;

in the middle of my program. Needless to say, I think it pulled the older "PeopleClass" from memory and used it. Any comments, answers?

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How do I re-initialize a class during runtime?
by tadman (Prior) on Feb 10, 2001 at 02:16 UTC
    You might just want to save the state of your program to a file and re-spawn a new copy of self with this new data. Consider:
    if (ClassFileChanged()) { my ($state_file) = SaveToStateFile(); if (!RespawnFromStateFile($state_file)) # I.E. 0 == no +error { exit(0); } else { warn "Could not reload $0 properly.\n"; } }
    This will prevent you from crashing your program if you break your class file (i.e. typo, compile error, etc.) and it will give you a chance to fix it properly.

    Of course, if you're inside of mod_perl, calling exit(0) will be futile, since mod_perl doesn't care about that sort of stuff and will just call the same program again for the next request.
Re: How do I re-initialize a class during runtime?
by Trinary (Pilgrim) on Feb 10, 2001 at 14:20 UTC
    This was answered by myself and a bunch of other folks earlier today. =)

    Trinary