Delays the loading of functions until they are used.
Each function is placed in a file that has the same name as the
function, with an .al extension. The files are stored in a subdirectory of
the auto/ directory that is named after the
package. For example, the function GoodStuff::whatever
is loaded from the file
auto/GoodStuff/whatever.al. Should always be
use
d and not require
d.
A module using the AutoLoader has the special marker, _ _END_ _
prior to the declarations for the subroutine to be
autoloaded. Any code before this marker is loaded and compiled when
the module is used, but at the marker, Perl stops parsing the
file.
Later, during execution, when a subroutine that isn’t yet in
memory is called, the AUTOLOAD
function attempts to find it in a directory relative to the location
of the module file. For example, if POSIX.pm is
in the directory /usr/local/lib/perl5, then
AutoLoader looks for POSIX subroutines in
/usr/local/lib/perl5/auto/POSIX/*.al.
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