First off I wasn't really suggesting that you use
<body bgcolor="<% $params{parse}->{BGCOLOR} %>">
The only difference between that and what your system currently
uses is that you use a different syntax for tags. And there's
nothing wrong with that. The above is just one way of using
templates.
What I was suggesting, rather, is that your compilation phase
could be turning this:
<body bgcolor="<@BGCOLOR@>">
into this:
$_out->('<body bgcolor="');
$_out->( $params{parse}->{BGCOLOR} );
$_out->('">');
This can be done by tokenizing your template, then turning
everything like
<@ FOO @>
into a statement like
$_out->( $params{parse}->{FOO} );
This Perl statement can then be directly executed, and moreover
you can write the Perl code to disk, then directly execute it again;
this means that on subsequent requests to your template, it
does not have to be reparsed.
As for whether this requires a major rewrite: it would require
separating your compilation and execution phases, essentially.
This is the biggest difference, because this is a mental difference:
when you use the substitution operator to walk through a string
and replace your template tags with other values, you are
performing "compilation" and "execution" of your template at
the same time. When you first compile to Perl code, then execute,
you are splitting up those steps.
So it would require a rethink of a piece of your system, and yes,
it would also require rewriting some of it. But it's something to
think about.
| 