G'day AssetXero,

Welcome to the Monastery.

I was looking into something a few years ago which seems rather similar to what you're after. Take a look at "require() @INC hooks problem". That's a rather long thread; you may gain something from reading it in its entirety; however, if you feel TL;DR setting in, "Re: require() @INC hooks problem [SOLVED]" contains links to the most pertinent parts.

Although I'm having a hard time imagining what you might need this for, and I think it'd be better if you explained that and showed us a SSCCE: use is like BEGIN { require Module; Module->import( LIST ); }, and require is like a do which first checks if the file has already been loaded (via %INC), and do is like a fancy eval. So the answer to your question is likely* eval, although of course that comes with serious security considerations if the code being executed is not 100% under your control.

* Update: The @INC hook mentioned by the others is certainly a possible solution as well.

the answer to your question is likely eval, although of course that comes with serious security considerations if the code being executed is not 100% under your control

For more background on this topic see:

• The safety of string eval and block eval.
• Re^3: Create sort function from a text file (string eval vs block eval)
• Undumping Perl by haukex

Updated: added extra references.

The callback can decide to return the code if encountered by require while working thru @INC.

The interface is a bit convoluted but it works. After adding the hook inside BEGIN you can call use or require deeply hidden inside foreign code and your "RAM modules" are installed.

quotes from the docs

You can also insert hooks into the file inclusion system by putting Perl code directly into @INC. Those hooks may be subroutine references, array references or blessed objects. See "require" in perlfunc for details.

edit

here some example code from an older discussion

• --> [WEBPERL] dynamically importing non-bundled modules via http

in that case the code is fetched via HTTP, but it should be easy to to just fill in your RAM stuff instead.

~/src/tmp$ cat dynamod
#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

my $mod_source = 'package Foo; sub bar { say q(Hello, world!) }';

eval $mod_source;
Foo::bar();

~/src/tmp$ ./dynamod 
Hello, world!
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