in reply to Re: Missing Image.al?
in thread Missing Image.al?

Actually, it is very likely not broken. That particular error message is just really bad (misleading), it puts all of the stress on the very unlikely reason (a broken installation) and doesn't even mention the very likely reason (you mispelt a method name).

My install of GD is not broken and yet perl -MGD -e"GD->Image()" says Can't locate auto/GD/Image.al in @INC .... This is just something that has long sucked about autoload. I vaguely recall somebody hinting at improving that error message around the last time I complained about it. I also vaguely recall that the error message itself used to state the suspicion that you have a broken installation. But I still find the error message quite misleading.

When one of my modules previously used inheritance to make use of some standard module (probably DynaLoader), I added my own AUTOLOAD routine to the module just so I could prevent that misleading error message (and the support questions it would likely produce). Since then I stopped using inheritance to get access to a single subroutine from standard modules like Exporter and DynaLoader.

- tye        

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Re^3: Missing Image.al? (unlikely)
by samtregar (Abbot) on Mar 29, 2008 at 03:36 UTC
    Yup, sounds right to me. I'm surprised I didn't think of that - I'm sure this has bitten me a few times too.

    -sam