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require won't import at runtime?

g.dave
New User

Nov 11, 2011, 11:52 AM

Post #1 of 5 (2297 views)

require won't import at runtime?	Can't Post

Can someone provide some insight on this?

my module (MyModule.pm):

Code

package MyModule; 
use Exporter(); 
our @ISA = qw(Exporter); 
@EXPORT_OK = qw(munge frobnicate); 
 
sub frobnicate { print "frobnicated!\n"; } 
sub munge      { print "munged!\n"; }

When I call it from a script, this works:

Code

use MyModule qw(frobnicate munge); 
frobnicate; 
munge;

and this works

Code

BEGIN { 
   require MyModule; 
   MyModule->import( qw(frobnicate munge) ); 
} 
frobnicate; 
munge;

but this does not

Code

require MyModule; 
MyModule->import( qw(frobnicate munge) ); 
frobnicate; 
munge;

This seems to me to imply that I can only import at compile time, not at run-time.
Am I missing something?

wickedxter
User

Nov 11, 2011, 12:41 PM

Post #2 of 5 (2290 views)

Re: [g.dave] require won't import at runtime? [In reply to]	Can't Post

@EXPORT_OK doesnt export by default only by request @EXPORT will export by default and wont require you to request functions

http://perldoc.perl.org/Exporter.html

(This post was edited by wickedxter on Nov 11, 2011, 12:42 PM)

g.dave
New User

Nov 11, 2011, 1:19 PM

Post #3 of 5 (2286 views)

Re: [wickedxter] require won't import at runtime? [In reply to]	Can't Post

You can see from my code that I did in fact request those functions. That should be made apparent by the fact that in the first two cases the requested functions were imported successfully. Only in the last case were they not imported, and it is not clear to me why.

FishMonger
Veteran

Nov 11, 2011, 2:45 PM

Post #4 of 5 (2280 views)

Re: [g.dave] require won't import at runtime? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Do you have the strict and warnings pragmas loaded?

You should declare @EXPORT_OK as you did with @ISA.

g.dave
New User

Nov 11, 2011, 3:56 PM

Post #5 of 5 (2273 views)

Re: [FishMonger] require won't import at runtime? [In reply to]	Can't Post

I've realized my answer.

This works

Code

frobnicate(); 
munge();

as does this

Code

&frobnicate; 
&munge;

Since in the last case the class methods were not imported at compile time, the compiler didn't know how to treat 'frobnicate' and 'munge' as bare words. Declaring them as functions explicitly gives the compiler the clue it needs to execute them as functions at runtime.

syntactically it is akin to a simple lexical declaration of:

Code

foo; # fails 
sub foo { print "foobar!\n" };

which does not work. reversing the order makes it work, or declaring 'foo' as a function also works:

Code

sub foo { print "foobar!\n" }; 
foo; # works!

Code

foo(); # works! 
sub foo { print "foobar!\n" }; 
&bar; # also works! 
sub bar { print "barfoo!\n" };

The same principal is involved when using require and then import in a runtime manner. If I think about the timing of compile vs runtime evaluation it begins to make sense why my third example in the original post won't work.

Thanks for the input.

(This post was edited by g.dave on Nov 11, 2011, 3:58 PM)

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