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perlperl-module

What's a good way to refactor a monster Perl module into submodules?

I have a Perl module for a project. I have maybe a dozen programs hanging off it and a lot of it is garbage. I hadn't spent much close personal time with DBI before, so that part is fixable, but the big thing is that it is big. Literally 2KLOCs.

It would be easy to break up this function (let's call it Dumb.pm) into separate modules ( Dumb::FormTools , Dumb::Database, etc.) except, as I said, there's lots of programs that already 'use Dumb ;'

I would like to export Dumb::Database's exportable functions through Dumb without having to have variations of this over and over again:

sub my_dumb_function { return Dumb::Database::my_dumb_function( @_ ) ; }

It isn't that I'm above that. It's just that this seems like the dumb and inelegant way of handling the issue. I used the "Don't know no better" excuse once, and once is really more than you get. Help?

Solution

  • Not sure how you are currently using it (does it currently export methods?), but you can set up the new child modules to allow you to import their functions (using Exporter), and then just have the original module explicitly import the now broken out pieces. Something like:

    package Dumb;

use Dumb::Database qw(my_dumb_function);

1;

package Dumb::Database;

use base qw(Exporter);

our @EXPORT_OK = qw(my_dumb_function);

sub my_dumb_function { 1; }

1;