use Perl

• abuse of import (Score:1)

  by perrin (4270)

  Class::Accessor has the advantage that it doesn't abuse import() to do something other than importing just to get a more compact syntax.
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by Aristotle (5147)

    Does it matter?

    In fact, since O::T creates accessors with the given names, it’s arguable whether it’s even abuse in the first place.
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by perrin (4270)

      I find it unnecessarily confusing to use import for non-importing tasks. It's usually done only as syntactic sugar, not because it actually needs to happen at that stage. It's not a huge problem, but I appreciate the fact that modules like Test::More let's me use a more traditional alternative syntax.
      • Re:abuse of import (Score:1)

        by jonswar (7880) <swartz@pobox.com> on 2007.09.05 5:18 (#57476) Journal

        What about pragmas, like strict? use strict qw(refs); Would you prefer use strict; BEGIN { strict->enable(qw(refs)) } Imports seem like a general way to parameterize the use of a module. The historical choice of the name import() shouldn't necessarily be taken as a permanent restriction on usage.

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        • Re: (Score:1)

          by perrin (4270)

          As an actual pragma, strict is kind of a special case. It also has an actual need to get the information at compile time, unlike many uses of import which would work fine with a standard sub call. I'd still prefer it if strict didn't look it was about to create a sub called "refs", but it's kind of too late now.
          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bart (450)

            I like the idea of generating the accessors at compile time. In that regard, is is a lot like importing.
        • Re: (Score:1)

          by ysth (7833)

          Well, since strict "refs" is lexically scoped, there is no BEGIN { } equivalent possible (see the block there?). Perhaps use constant is a better example.