How do I dynamically discover packages from a partial namespace in perl? - perl

Question

I have a directory structure that looks like:
Foo::Bar::Baz::1
Foo::Bar::Baz::2 etc
Can I list the packages from something like:
use Foo::Bar::Baz;
Thanks!
Edit: Made it more clear what the modules are.

Answer 1

If you want to load all modules in your include path with a certain prefix (e.g. everything under a::b::c, you can use Module::Find.
For example:
use Module::Find 'useall';
my #loaded = useall 'Foo::Bar::Baz'; # loads everything under Foo::Bar::Baz
This depends on your #INC path being set up with the necessary directories, so do any required manipulation (e.g. with use lib) first.

Answer 2

Normally a script such as a/b/c.pl won't have a namespace other than main. Perhaps you are thinking of discovering modules with names such as a/b/c.pm (which is a bad name, since lower-cased package names are generally reserved for Perl internals).
However, given a directory path, you can look for potential Perl modules using File::Find:
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find;
use Data::Dumper;
my #modules;
sub wanted
{
push #modules, $_ if m/\.pm$/
}
find(\&wanted, 'A/B');
print "possible modules found:\n";
print Dumper(\#modules)'

Answer 3

This might be overkill, but you can inspect the symbol table before and after loading the module and see what changed:
use strict; use warnings;
my %original = map { $_ => 1 } get_namespaces("::");
require Inline;
print "New namespaces since 'require Inline' call are:\n";
my #new_namespaces = sort grep !defined $original{$_}, get_namespaces("::");
foreach my $new_namespace (#new_namespaces) {
print "\t$new_namespace\n";
}
sub get_namespaces {
# recursively inspect symbol table for known namespaces
my $pkg = shift;
my #namespace = ();
my %s = eval "%" . $pkg;
foreach my $key (grep /::$/, keys %s) {
next if $key eq "main::";
push #namespace, "$pkg$key", get_namespaces("$pkg$key");
}
return #namespace;
}
New namespaces since 'require Inline' call are:
::AutoLoader::
::Config::
::Digest::
::Digest::MD5::
::Dos::
::EPOC::
::Exporter::
::Exporter::Heavy::
::File::
::File::Spec::
::File::Spec::Cygwin::
::File::Spec::Unix::
::File::Spec::Win32::
::Inline::Files::
::Inline::denter::
::Scalar::
::Scalar::Util::
::Socket::
::VMS::
::VMS::Filespec::
::XSLoader::
::vars::
::warnings::register::

Answer 4

Just to be clear, are you looking at random packages in random Perl code?
Or for Perl modules, e.g. "a/b/c/d1.pm" with module "a::b::c::d1"?
In either case, you can not use a single "use" statement to load them all.
What you need to do is to find all the appropriate files, using either glob or File::Find.
In the first case (modules), you can then load them either by require-ing each file, OR by converting filename into module name (s#/#::#g; s#\.pm$##;) and calling use on each module individually.
As far as actual packages nested in random Perl files, those packages can be:
Listed by grepping each file (again, found via glob or File::Find) for /^package (.*);/
Actually loaded by executing require $file for each file.
In this case, please note that the package name for each of those packages in a/b/c/1.pl will NOT need to be related to "a::b::c" - e.g. they CAN be named by the file author "p1", "a::p1" or "a::b::c::p1_something".