I have inherited a proprietary testing system that uses 200 individual Perl scripts for each test case of an external device (over a serial connection).

Each script uses a custom "Test" module, calls a start routine, does the test in perl using subroutines from it, and then calls an end routine.

On top of that we have a master perl script which calls each perl script (by running it with the system command) in turn.

We are having performance problems. I suspect because it is building a new perl interpreter and reloading the harnass module for each test case.

I want to convert the system over to using a single perl interpreter.

This would involve turning the perl scripts into modules I suspect, loading them somehow at runtime with the master script. (require, use, do, eval? )

Can anyone recommend a strategy as to making this change?

-Andrew.