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Exporter(3pm)                         Perl Programmers Reference Guide                         Exporter(3pm)



NAME
       Exporter - Implements default import method for modules

SYNOPSIS
       In module YourModule.pm:

         package YourModule;
         require Exporter;
         @ISA = qw(Exporter);
         @EXPORT_OK = qw(munge frobnicate);  # symbols to export on request

       or

         package YourModule;
         use Exporter 'import'; # gives you Exporter's import() method directly
         @EXPORT_OK = qw(munge frobnicate);  # symbols to export on request

       In other files which wish to use "YourModule":

         use YourModule qw(frobnicate);      # import listed symbols
         frobnicate ($left, $right)          # calls YourModule::frobnicate

       Take a look at "Good Practices" for some variants you will like to use in modern Perl code.

DESCRIPTION
       The Exporter module implements an "import" method which allows a module to export functions and vari-ables variables
       ables to its users' namespaces. Many modules use Exporter rather than implementing their own "import"
       method because Exporter provides a highly flexible interface, with an implementation optimised for
       the common case.

       Perl automatically calls the "import" method when processing a "use" statement for a module. Modules
       and "use" are documented in perlfunc and perlmod. Understanding the concept of modules and how the
       "use" statement operates is important to understanding the Exporter.

       How to Export

       The arrays @EXPORT and @EXPORT_OK in a module hold lists of symbols that are going to be exported
       into the users name space by default, or which they can request to be exported, respectively.  The
       symbols can represent functions, scalars, arrays, hashes, or typeglobs.  The symbols must be given by
       full name with the exception that the ampersand in front of a function is optional, e.g.

           @EXPORT    = qw(afunc $scalar @array);   # afunc is a function
           @EXPORT_OK = qw(&bfunc %hash *typeglob); # explicit prefix on &bfunc

       If you are only exporting function names it is recommended to omit the ampersand, as the implementa-tion implementation
       tion is faster this way.

       Selecting What To Export

       Do not export method names!

       Do not export anything else by default without a good reason!

       Exports pollute the namespace of the module user.  If you must export try to use @EXPORT_OK in pref-erence preference
       erence to @EXPORT and avoid short or common symbol names to reduce the risk of name clashes.

       Generally anything not exported is still accessible from outside the module using the "YourMod-ule::item_name" "YourModule::item_name"
       ule::item_name" (or "$blessed_ref->method") syntax.  By convention you can use a leading underscore
       on names to informally indicate that they are 'internal' and not for public use.

       (It is actually possible to get private functions by saying:

         my $subref = sub { ... };
         $subref->(@args);            # Call it as a function
         $obj->$subref(@args);        # Use it as a method

       However if you use them for methods it is up to you to figure out how to make inheritance work.)

       As a general rule, if the module is trying to be object oriented then export nothing. If it's just a
       collection of functions then @EXPORT_OK anything but use @EXPORT with caution. For function and
       method names use barewords in preference to names prefixed with ampersands for the export lists.

       Other module design guidelines can be found in perlmod.

       How to Import

       In other files which wish to use your module there are three basic ways for them to load your module
       and import its symbols:

       "use YourModule;"
           This imports all the symbols from YourModule's @EXPORT into the namespace of the "use" statement.

       "use YourModule ();"
           This causes perl to load your module but does not import any symbols.

       "use YourModule qw(...);"
           This imports only the symbols listed by the caller into their namespace.  All listed symbols must
           be in your @EXPORT or @EXPORT_OK, else an error occurs. The advanced export features of Exporter
           are accessed like this, but with list entries that are syntactically distinct from symbol names.

       Unless you want to use its advanced features, this is probably all you need to know to use Exporter.

Advanced features
       Specialised Import Lists

       If any of the entries in an import list begins with !, : or / then the list is treated as a series of
       specifications which either add to or delete from the list of names to import. They are processed
       left to right. Specifications are in the form:

           [!]name         This name only
           [!]:DEFAULT     All names in @EXPORT
           [!]:tag         All names in $EXPORT_TAGS{tag} anonymous list
           [!]/pattern/    All names in @EXPORT and @EXPORT_OK which match

       A leading ! indicates that matching names should be deleted from the list of names to import.  If the
       first specification is a deletion it is treated as though preceded by :DEFAULT. If you just want to
       import extra names in addition to the default set you will still need to include :DEFAULT explicitly.

       e.g., Module.pm defines:

           @EXPORT      = qw(A1 A2 A3 A4 A5);
           @EXPORT_OK   = qw(B1 B2 B3 B4 B5);
           %EXPORT_TAGS = (T1 => [qw(A1 A2 B1 B2)], T2 => [qw(A1 A2 B3 B4)]);

           Note that you cannot use tags in @EXPORT or @EXPORT_OK.
           Names in EXPORT_TAGS must also appear in @EXPORT or @EXPORT_OK.

       An application using Module can say something like:

           use Module qw(:DEFAULT :T2 !B3 A3);

       Other examples include:

           use Socket qw(!/^[AP]F_/ !SOMAXCONN !SOL_SOCKET);
           use POSIX  qw(:errno_h :termios_h !TCSADRAIN !/^EXIT/);

       Remember that most patterns (using //) will need to be anchored with a leading ^, e.g., "/^EXIT/"
       rather than "/EXIT/".

       You can say "BEGIN { $Exporter::Verbose=1 }" to see how the specifications are being processed and
       what is actually being imported into modules.

       Exporting without using Exporter's import method

       Exporter has a special method, 'export_to_level' which is used in situations where you can't directly
       call Exporter's import method. The export_to_level method looks like:

           MyPackage->export_to_level($where_to_export, $package, @what_to_export);

       where $where_to_export is an integer telling how far up the calling stack to export your symbols, and
       @what_to_export is an array telling what symbols *to* export (usually this is @_).  The $package
       argument is currently unused.

       For example, suppose that you have a module, A, which already has an import function:

           package A;

           @ISA = qw(Exporter);
           @EXPORT_OK = qw ($b);

           sub import
           {
               $A::b = 1;     # not a very useful import method
           }

       and you want to Export symbol $A::b back to the module that called package A. Since Exporter relies
       on the import method to work, via inheritance, as it stands Exporter::import() will never get called.
       Instead, say the following:

           package A;
           @ISA = qw(Exporter);
           @EXPORT_OK = qw ($b);

           sub import
           {
               $A::b = 1;
               A->export_to_level(1, @_);
           }

       This will export the symbols one level 'above' the current package - ie: to the program or module
       that used package A.

       Note: Be careful not to modify @_ at all before you call export_to_level - or people using your pack-age package
       age will get very unexplained results!

       Exporting without inheriting from Exporter

       By including Exporter in your @ISA you inherit an Exporter's import() method but you also inherit
       several other helper methods which you probably don't want. To avoid this you can do

         package YourModule;
         use Exporter qw( import );

       which will export Exporter's own import() method into YourModule.  Everything will work as before but
       you won't need to include Exporter in @YourModule::ISA.

       Note: This feature was introduced in version 5.57 of Exporter, released with perl 5.8.3.

       Module Version Checking

       The Exporter module will convert an attempt to import a number from a module into a call to "$mod-ule_name->require_version($value)". "$module_name->require_version($value)".
       ule_name->require_version($value)". This can be used to validate that the version of the module being
       used is greater than or equal to the required version.

       The Exporter module supplies a default "require_version" method which checks the value of $VERSION in
       the exporting module.

       Since the default "require_version" method treats the $VERSION number as a simple numeric value it
       will regard version 1.10 as lower than 1.9. For this reason it is strongly recommended that you use
       numbers with at least two decimal places, e.g., 1.09.

       Managing Unknown Symbols

       In some situations you may want to prevent certain symbols from being exported. Typically this
       applies to extensions which have functions or constants that may not exist on some systems.

       The names of any symbols that cannot be exported should be listed in the @EXPORT_FAIL array.

       If a module attempts to import any of these symbols the Exporter will give the module an opportunity
       to handle the situation before generating an error. The Exporter will call an export_fail method with
       a list of the failed symbols:

         @failed_symbols = $module_name->export_fail(@failed_symbols);

       If the "export_fail" method returns an empty list then no error is recorded and all the requested
       symbols are exported. If the returned list is not empty then an error is generated for each symbol
       and the export fails. The Exporter provides a default "export_fail" method which simply returns the
       list unchanged.

       Uses for the "export_fail" method include giving better error messages for some symbols and perform-ing performing
       ing lazy architectural checks (put more symbols into @EXPORT_FAIL by default and then take them out
       if someone actually tries to use them and an expensive check shows that they are usable on that plat-form). platform).
       form).

       Tag Handling Utility Functions

       Since the symbols listed within %EXPORT_TAGS must also appear in either @EXPORT or @EXPORT_OK, two
       utility functions are provided which allow you to easily add tagged sets of symbols to @EXPORT or
       @EXPORT_OK:

         %EXPORT_TAGS = (foo => [qw(aa bb cc)], bar => [qw(aa cc dd)]);

         Exporter::export_tags('foo');     # add aa, bb and cc to @EXPORT
         Exporter::export_ok_tags('bar');  # add aa, cc and dd to @EXPORT_OK

       Any names which are not tags are added to @EXPORT or @EXPORT_OK unchanged but will trigger a warning
       (with "-w") to avoid misspelt tags names being silently added to @EXPORT or @EXPORT_OK. Future ver-sions versions
       sions may make this a fatal error.

       Generating combined tags

       If several symbol categories exist in %EXPORT_TAGS, it's usually useful to create the utility ":all"
       to simplify "use" statements.

       The simplest way to do this is:

         %EXPORT_TAGS = (foo => [qw(aa bb cc)], bar => [qw(aa cc dd)]);

         # add all the other ":class" tags to the ":all" class,
         # deleting duplicates
         {
           my %seen;

           push @{$EXPORT_TAGS{all}},
             grep {!$seen{$_}++} @{$EXPORT_TAGS{$_}} foreach keys %EXPORT_TAGS;
         }

       CGI.pm creates an ":all" tag which contains some (but not really all) of its categories.  That could
       be done with one small change:

         # add some of the other ":class" tags to the ":all" class,
         # deleting duplicates
         {
           my %seen;

           push @{$EXPORT_TAGS{all}},
             grep {!$seen{$_}++} @{$EXPORT_TAGS{$_}}
               foreach qw/html2 html3 netscape form cgi internal/;
         }

       Note that the tag names in %EXPORT_TAGS don't have the leading ':'.

       "AUTOLOAD"ed Constants

       Many modules make use of "AUTOLOAD"ing for constant subroutines to avoid having to compile and waste
       memory on rarely used values (see perlsub for details on constant subroutines).  Calls to such con-stant constant
       stant subroutines are not optimized away at compile time because they can't be checked at compile
       time for constancy.

       Even if a prototype is available at compile time, the body of the subroutine is not (it hasn't been
       "AUTOLOAD"ed yet). perl needs to examine both the "()" prototype and the body of a subroutine at com-pile compile
       pile time to detect that it can safely replace calls to that subroutine with the constant value.

       A workaround for this is to call the constants once in a "BEGIN" block:

          package My ;

          use Socket ;

          foo( SO_LINGER );     ## SO_LINGER NOT optimized away; called at runtime
          BEGIN { SO_LINGER }
          foo( SO_LINGER );     ## SO_LINGER optimized away at compile time.

       This forces the "AUTOLOAD" for "SO_LINGER" to take place before SO_LINGER is encountered later in
       "My" package.

       If you are writing a package that "AUTOLOAD"s, consider forcing an "AUTOLOAD" for any constants
       explicitly imported by other packages or which are usually used when your package is "use"d.

Good Practices
       Declaring @EXPORT_OK and Friends

       When using "Exporter" with the standard "strict" and "warnings" pragmas, the "our" keyword is needed
       to declare the package variables @EXPORT_OK, @EXPORT, @ISA, etc.

         our @ISA = qw(Exporter);
         our @EXPORT_OK = qw(munge frobnicate);

       If backward compatibility for Perls under 5.6 is important, one must write instead a "use vars"
       statement.

         use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT_OK);
         @ISA = qw(Exporter);
         @EXPORT_OK = qw(munge frobnicate);

       Playing Safe

       There are some caveats with the use of runtime statements like "require Exporter" and the assignment
       to package variables, which can very subtle for the unaware programmer.  This may happen for instance
       with mutually recursive modules, which are affected by the time the relevant constructions are exe-cuted. executed.
       cuted.

       The ideal (but a bit ugly) way to never have to think about that is to use "BEGIN" blocks. So the
       first part of the "SYNOPSIS" code could be rewritten as:

         package YourModule;

         use strict;
         use warnings;

         our (@ISA, @EXPORT_OK);
         BEGIN {
            require Exporter;
            @ISA = qw(Exporter);
            @EXPORT_OK = qw(munge frobnicate);  # symbols to export on request
         }

       The "BEGIN" will assure that the loading of Exporter.pm and the assignments to @ISA and @EXPORT_OK
       happen immediately, leaving no room for something to get awry or just plain wrong.

       With respect to loading "Exporter" and inheriting, there are alternatives with the use of modules
       like "base" and "parent".

         use base qw( Exporter );
         # or
         use parent qw( Exporter );

       Any of these statements are nice replacements for "BEGIN { require Exporter; @ISA = qw(Exporter); }"
       with the same compile-time effect. The basic difference is that "base" code interacts with declared
       "fields" while "parent" is a streamlined version of the older "base" code to just establish the IS-A
       relationship.

       For more details, see the documentation and code of base and parent.

       Another thorough remedy to that runtime vs.  compile-time trap is to use Exporter::Easy, which is a
       wrapper of Exporter that allows all boilerplate code at a single gulp in the use statement.

          use Exporter::Easy (
              OK => [ qw(munge frobnicate) ],
          );
          # @ISA setup is automatic
          # all assignments happen at compile time

       What not to Export

       You have been warned already in "Selecting What To Export" to not export:

          method names (because you don't need to and that's likely to not do what you want),

          anything by default (because you don't want to surprise your users...  badly)

          anything you don't need to (because less is more)

       There's one more item to add to this list. Do not export variable names. Just because "Exporter" lets
       you do that, it does not mean you should.

         @EXPORT_OK = qw( $svar @avar %hvar ); # DON'T!

       Exporting variables is not a good idea. They can change under the hood, provoking horrible effects
       at-a-distance, that are too hard to track and to fix. Trust me: they are not worth it.

       To provide the capability to set/get class-wide settings, it is best instead to provide accessors as
       subroutines or class methods instead.

SEE ALSO
       "Exporter" is definitely not the only module with symbol exporter capabilities. At CPAN, you may find
       a bunch of them. Some are lighter. Some provide improved APIs and features. Peek the one that fits
       your needs. The following is a sample list of such modules.

           Exporter::Easy
           Exporter::Lite
           Exporter::Renaming
           Exporter::Tidy
           Sub::Exporter / Sub::Installer
           Perl6::Export / Perl6::Export::Attrs

LICENSE
       This library is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl
       itself.



perl v5.8.9                                      2001-09-21                                    Exporter(3pm)