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=head1 TITLE
Wildcards for multiple module imports
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Peter Bevan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 8 August 2000
Version: 1
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 62
=head1 ABSTRACT
It occurs that being able to include modules via wildcards
for entire packages would be a desirable feature. Just as in
Java, related packages could then be loaded implicitley without
the need for specifying each one in turn. The LWP and Net
packages, are a good example.
=head2 DESCRIPTION
A directory in the perl library is intended to encapsulate modules
which have relevance to each other (again the Net package is a good
example). Given that this is the case (and given extensive expirience)
it is apparent that there are many situations in which onw would wish
to load the entire group.
As things stand this is not a possibility (without reading the dir
stuctures and loading each file dynamicly - which isn't a great idea).
As a side point this may push module developers into even better
co-operative working enviroments (i.e. they will need to work much
more closely together in order to tie up their respective modules)
=head2 IMPLEMENTATION
The option to load modules thus:
use Foo::* [The '*' character isn't very pleasant, any sugestions??]
or
use Foo::Bar::* [An alternate Foo::, has been sugested]
etc
Also, having thought about it, it occurs that the ability to opt-out
of such a scheme is desirable. This could be acheived by eigther setting
some kind of global identifier within the module to signal it's
"community-mindedness" or possibly a new naming convention (.pm for modules
which have opted-out and .pmc for instance, for those which have not). It
may
even be possible to set a flag of somekind in the module packlist. I guess
thats up to the internals developers to decide...
=head2 REFERENCES
Any java class package...
perldoc perlmod
