I'm working on a server that needs to dynamically load differing pieces of code for different tasks and types of data. The code for any given package is created by compiling legacy BASIC code into perl code (with Parse::RecDescent) in its own namespace based on the source BASIC file. Since I'm dealing with potentially thousands or tens of thousands of namespaces, memory usage would go through the roof if they all remained in memory together (only a handful need to be in memory together at any given time).

In the search for a possible solution to the problem, I came across Symbol::delete_package, which appears to blast the symbol table for a given package clean. My question is this: When I use Symbol::delete_package to destroy a package, I imagine that the memory previously used by the variables in the package is freed for reuse, but does the memory previously held by the code in the package get freed for reuse, or does it simply remove it from the symbol table and continue holding onto the memory?