Re: Using a subroutine as a module

[ysth]

in reply to Using a subroutine as a module

The other answers so far have addressed your actual problem. I'd like to add a comment on your "validate.pm".

You start it with a shebang line, which is an odd thing to do since it is not actually executed (nor will any flags such as -w be parsed from the line by perl).

Usually (but only optionally) a module will declare its own name space and only export to the use'ing code subs that are requested:

in MyModule.pm:

package MyModule;
use Exporter ();
our @ISA = 'Exporter';
our @EXPORT_OK = qw/foo bar/;
sub foo { "do some foo stuff" }
sub bar { "do some bar stuff" }
1; # not actually needed since @EXPORT_OK= evaluates as true

and in the calling code:

use MyModule 'foo';
&foo();

You might take a look at perlmod.pod for more info on creating modules.

One last comment: one-level all-lowercase names like "validate" are usually for pragmas and are reserved for use by perl5-porters.

[bobn]

[ysth]

I would rather use class methods than create a dummy object with no other purpose than to qualify the package to call.

File::Spec is an excellent example of when that works well.

In the more typical case, however, you would be just as well off importing nothing and always fully qualifying your calls (e.g. MyModule::foo() ). Importing some things is a programmer convenience to save typing and improve readability. If the sub names reflect what they do, conflicts should be rare (and can always be resolved by fully qualifying).

[Anonymous Monk]

Egads, far too many uses of OO are superfluous and/or ill advised already and now you want OO for simple library calls. Just use fully qualified package names:

#### MyMod.pm
package MyMod;
sub foo { "whatever" }
1;

### calling script
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use MyMod;
print MyMod::foo();

[bobn]