On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 02:55:37PM -0500, Ron Newman wrote:
> The following program does not cause an error, even though
> my package neither defines a function called import(), nor
> inherits from any other package:
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> use strict;
>
> package This;
> This->import();
>
> My question: What function is it calling, and where did it
> find that function? Is there a UNIVERSAL::import() which
> does nothing?
>
It turns out that import() gets a bit of special treatment; if the method
doesn't exist, the error is ignored.
perldoc -f use:
The BEGIN forces the require and import() to
happen at compile time. The require makes sure
the module is loaded into memory if it hasn't been
yet. The import() is not a builtin--it's just an
ordinary static method call into the "Module"
package to tell the module to import the list of
features back into the current package. The
module can implement its import() method any way
it likes, though most modules just choose to
derive their import() method via inheritance from
the Exporter class that is defined in the Exporter
module. See the Exporter manpage. If no import()
method can be found then the error is currently
silently ignored. This may change to a fatal
error in a future version.
Ronald
