


less(3p)         Perl Programmers Reference Guide        less(3p)


NAME
       less - perl pragma to request less of something

SYNOPSIS
           use less 'CPU';

DESCRIPTION
       This is a user-pragma. If you're very lucky some code
       you're using will know that you asked for less CPU usage
       or ram or fat or... we just can't know. Consult your
       documentation on everything you're currently using.

       For general suggestions, try requesting "CPU" or "memory".

           use less 'memory';
           use less 'CPU';
           use less 'fat';

       If you ask for nothing in particular, you'll be asking for
       "less 'please'".

           use less 'please';

FOR MODULE AUTHORS
       less has been in the core as a "joke" module for ages now
       and it hasn't had any real way to communicating any
       information to anything. Thanks to Nicholas Clark we have
       user pragmas (see perlpragma) and now "less" can do
       something.

       You can probably expect your users to be able to guess
       that they can request less CPU or memory or just "less"
       overall.

       If the user didn't specify anything, it's interpreted as
       having used the "please" tag. It's up to you to make this
       useful.

         # equivalent
         use less;
         use less 'please';

   "BOOLEAN = less->of( FEATURE )"
       The class method "less->of( NAME )" returns a boolean to
       tell you whether your user requested less of something.

         if ( less->of( 'CPU' ) ) {
             ...
         }
         elsif ( less->of( 'memory' ) ) {

         }





perl v5.10.1                2008-09-29                          1





less(3p)         Perl Programmers Reference Guide        less(3p)


   "FEATURES = less->of()"
       If you don't ask for any feature, you get the list of
       features that the user requested you to be nice to. This
       has the nice side effect that if you don't respect
       anything in particular then you can just ask for it and
       use it like a boolean.

         if ( less->of ) {
             ...
         }
         else {
             ...
         }

CAVEATS
       This probably does nothing.
       This works only on 5.10+
           At least it's backwards compatible in not doing much.







































perl v5.10.1                2008-09-29                          2


