Forcing a PERL script to reload libraries

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

I have a very complex PERL script that I use for my radio station (plug away: http://ourthing.radio.binary9.net). Everytime I make a modification to my main "playdaemon" script, I have to kill it and restart it; which causes a hiccup in the stream (and restarts the current song).

What I would like to do is something like this (non-functioning):

playdaemon:

#!/usr/bin/perl

require "MyRoutines.pl";

$SIG{HUP}=sub { require "MyRoutines.pl"; };

while (1) {
   DoIt();
}
__END__

Then, as I change the contents of MyRoutines.pl, I could send a SIGHUP to my program and it would reload the contents of MyRoutines.pl to reflect the changes.

Is such a thing possible? I believe my problem is that PERL already knows it has loaded the MyRoutines.pl library and won't do so again. How many I accomplish this?

TIA!

Comment on Forcing a PERL script to reload libraries

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Forcing a PERL script to reload libraries by merlyn (Sage) on Dec 20, 2000 at 20:14 UTC
Poke through `%INC`, which is Perl's memory of what's already been required. It'll be obvious what you need to delete from there before calling require again. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Forcing a PERL script to reload libraries by mr.nick (Chaplain) on Dec 20, 2000 at 20:23 UTC
Yay!! A simple $SIG{HUP}=sub { delete $INC{"MyRoutines.pl"}; require "MyRoutines.pl"; } did the trick! Thank you! I didn't realize you could just modify that hash. Btw, I'm the same poster as the original question, I just decided to create an account :)	[reply]
Re: Forcing a PERL script to reload libraries by KM (Priest) on Dec 20, 2000 at 20:24 UTC
You could try: `$SIG{HUP} = sub { delete $INC{'MyRoutines.pl'}; require "MyRoutines.pl +";};` [download] Perl will look in %INC to see what has been 'used'. When it sees something is already in there, it will not re-use/require it. By deleting it, you can force it to re-require. Cheers, KM	[reply] [d/l]