in reply to Re: To USE or not to USE
in thread To USE or not to USE

Importing selected functions reduces namespace pollution and memory usage, since aliases do take up space. Of course you could just use the OO interface instead.

Note that your particular example is actually a counter-example, because CGI prints "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" in order to prevent cross-site scripting attacks. This demonstrates how the "just code this part yourself because it's too simple to load a module" attitude can lead to half-assed and broken code if you don't fully understand the problem you're trying to solve.

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Re: Re: Re: To USE or not to USE
by ajdelore (Pilgrim) on Jul 22, 2003 at 18:17 UTC

    I do make a habit of using CGI and other CPAN modules just for that very reason. I have no plans to change this and go re-writing CPAN everytime I write code.

    I was merely asking about the performance issues from a perspective of academic curiousity. As others have pointed out, optimization is only one factor to consider along with readability, safety, development time, etc. when writing code.

    Was the last part of your post directed at me, personally? Or are you making a generalization?

    </ajdelore>

[reply]
      I was just using your CGI example to make a point about the dangers of the "CPAN modules are too big for me" attitude. I don't know anything about you personally, or your coding habits.
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Re^3: To USE or not to USE
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Jul 23, 2003 at 16:12 UTC

    Another advantage of being explicit in listing what functions you import is that your code is more self-documenting. You can see where each subroutine in your code comes from without having to know the default export lists of the modules you use.

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