#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

BEGIN {
  our $phase_of_moon = shift || int(rand(100));
}

use if $::phase_of_moon > 42, 'Time::HiRes' => qw( time );

my $foo = time;
print $foo, "\n";

__END__
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Nice use of if.pm, Fletch, but points off for unnecessary package variable.

my $phase;
BEGIN { $phase = shift || int(rand 100) }
use if $phase > 42, Time::Hires => qw( time );
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    -- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos

Ah, perfect!

Here's what I really want, though:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

BEGIN {
  Time::HiRes->import('time') if eval "require Time::HiRes";
}

my $time = time;
print "$time\n";
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UPDATE (Fri Apr 30 11:15:23 PDT 2004):

Your advice is well-received, chip! Changed the eval EXPR to eval BLOCK. As for letting the user know, that is also a good idea. I left that out for brevity. This is actually for a patch to Net::IRC, so I'll let Jeremy (the maintainer) decide weather he wants to emit a warning.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

BEGIN {
  Time::HiRes->import('time') if eval { require Time::HiRes };
}

my $time = time;
print "$time\n";
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---
"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

That eval STRING could just as well be eval BLOCK.

More to the point: Having your program work differently just because a module gets installed is usually evil. People don't expect that installing a module will make apparently unrelated code start doing different things. At least print a diagnostic or something, a la CPAN and Term::ReadLine.

    -- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos