There isn't much of a penalty on eval STRING when it's a simple statement like use. Not compared to the time it takes to load the module! :)

You can always use require, but you first have to perform a transform on the module name (this is a design bug which is tidied in Perl 6):

  my $module = "Some::Class";
  $module =~ s{::}{/}g;
  $module .= ".pm";
  require $module;
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There will be a cargo cult disapproving of require, be sure to poke your tongue out at them, laugh and ask them why until they say "'coz" :-).

You can also look at Class::Tangram::Generator for an example of code that defers loading of modules until objects of the relevant type are created, using several different mechanisms.

$h=$ENV{HOME};my@q=split/\n\n/,`cat $h/.quotes`;$s="$h/."
."signature";$t=`cat $s`;print$t,"\n",$q[rand($#q)],"\n";
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