in reply to Re: Is require still required?
in thread Is require still required?

Except it's a really unreliable way to return a value.

require './hash.pl';

use strict; use warnings;
use Data::Dump;
my $var = require './hash.pl';
dd $var;

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Re^3: Is require still required?
by shmem (Chancellor) on Feb 02, 2024 at 11:41 UTC
    Except it's a really unreliable way to return a value.

    This is an assertion without argument.

    If it would be unreliable, it should fail sometimes - but it doesn't, only in the ways require does.

    Yes, the example code is just bare-bone without any checks. It is also nonsensical because it doesn't do anything useful.

    perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'
[reply]
      If it would be unreliable, it should fail sometimes - but it doesn't, ....

      I am pretty sure that Toby meant "unreliable" as in "the return value depends on whether that file had already been required before".

      Let me expand his example a bit:

      use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;
use File::Temp qw/ tempfile /;
use Data::Dump;

my ($fh, $filename) = tempfile();

print $fh qq('Hello, world';\n);
close $fh;

my $first = require $filename;
dd $first;

my $second = require $filename;
dd $second;

      [download]

      Output:

      "Hello, world"
1
[reply]
[d/l]

        This is all stated in the documentation for require, inclusive the role of %INC: 

        if (exists $INC{$filename}) {
    return 1 if $INC{$filename};
    croak "Compilation failed in require";
}

        [download]

        To import a fle more than once you have to delete from %INC of course.

        perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'
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