Source filters are only evil if you invoke them, the beauty of smart comments is that normally they're just comments. Just leave 'use Smart::Comments' out of your code, then to invoke the smart comments (and the source filter), invoke your script via:
perl -MSmart::Comments myscript.pl
or for finer control:
perl -MSmart::Comments='####' myscript.pl
See
Smart::Comments for details.
This way you have zero overhead except when debugging. I'm surprised this simple technique isn't mentioned in the documentation.
