SPUG: Interdependance of package subroutines

[Marc M. Adkins]

I am currently using fully qualified function names for a lot of utility 
package functions.  I like seeing immediately where the function comes 
from, it avoids cluttering my local name space, and there's some sense 
of increased accuracy in specifying the entire pedigree of the function.

I may be overly fussy about not just importing the symbols.  Maybe 
because I often use a lot of packages and I'm afraid of some obscure 
interaction.  Or with my own code, forgetting that I already wrote a 
function by that name in a package I use all over the place and having 
subtle bugs plague me for weeks.

I never specify something as main::Function(%args), if it's in the 
default namespace I just use the unadorned function name.

I don't use the & operator as in your examples, I just invoke the 
functions as Package::Function(%args).

My function trees can go three and four deep for subsidiary packages.  I 
use the tree of classes (namespaces?) to group related software modules 
and/or classes.  If done properly the names read well, making the 
purpose of the function immediately apparent from the name tree.

Most of my code is done in objects.  Mostly what I manipulate are things 
of the form $object->method(%args).  So the long function names I use 
are nowhere near on every line.  It doesn't seem like a real burden to 
type the long names.

Of course, I can touch type.  If I was a hunt'n'peck typist I might just 
import the blinking symbols and be done with it.

mma

Ken Clarke wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
>     I'm building a library of subroutines, separated into functionally 
> grouped packages, for use in CGI scripts and cron jobs.  I'm finding that as 
> the library grows more and more I want subroutines from one package to be 
> available for use in another package, so I'm either calling them by their 
> package qualified names [ eg my $result_hashref = 
> &MyPackage::my_sub(\%sub_args); ], or if they've been imported into package 
> main, directly from there [ eg my $result_hashref = 
> &main::my_sub(\%sub_args); ].
> 
>     I would appreciate hearing your comments on the wisdom of this strategy 
> from an architectural standpoint.  Testing on various platforms shows that 
> everything works as intended but I'm getting an uneasy feeling that there 
> may be pitfalls which I am not seeing.
> 
>     I'd also appreciate recommendations for articles, books etc which 
> examine architectural/structural issues of medium to large scale 
> applications.
> 
>     Thanks for your time.
> 
> 
>>>Ken Clarke
>>>Contract Web Programmer / E-commerce Technologist
>>>www.PerlProgrammer.net
> 
> 
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