To alleviate this performance hit a bit, init_and_watch() can be configured to listen for a Unix signal to reload the configuration instead:

    Log::Log4perl->init_and_watch($conf_file, 'HUP');
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This will set up a signal handler for SIGHUP and reload the configuration if the application receives this signal, e.g. via the kill command:

    kill -HUP pid
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where pid is the process ID of the application.

SIGNAL MODE

Instead of polling time and file changes, new() can be instructed to set up a signal handler. If you call the constructor like

    my $watcher = Log::Log4perl::Config::Watch->new(
                          file    => "/data/my.conf",
                          signal  => 'HUP'
                  );
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then a signal handler will be installed, setting the object's variable $self->{signal_caught} to a true value when the signal arrives. Comes with all the problems that signal handlers go along with.