Interesting, thanks for the references; I was familiar with neither, and they both look to aid in such design. Module::Load may well do what I need; Module::Pluggable seems more flexible, although a bit overkill for this project, but it may serve well in future endeavors.

Thanks for the information; I've included some additional findings I've made from playing with this module, and follow-up comments. I'm content that both solutions appear to work, and in my case equally well without significant benefit either way. Update: As pointed out by the Anonymous Monk below, string eval is still processed as a mini-program, leading to additional protections supplied by a more full-featured wrapper. Thanks!

(Update: readmore tags.) My detailed discovery thus far:

... However, I had to do no such changing of notation when ...

you can't use require $modname without string eval because require expects a $filename

since string-eval takes perl source code, $type would should be validated to prevent problems

eval "require $modname; 1" is slower than require $filename;

so module::load helps you use require $modname by converting $modname into filename