A blessed object contains the name of the class, in this case IO::Handle. So the program knows the object's class from the object itself, not by reading the IO::Handle file. To find the object's methods, it must be told where to look.

A simple implementation to explain gmargo's concept:

Foo.pm:

package Foo;

use strict;
use warnings;

sub new {
  return bless {};
}

sub method {
    return 1;
}

1;
[download]

script.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
require Foo;

my $class = 'Foo';
my $obj = bless {}, $class;

print $obj->method;
[download]

Works fine, but if you remove the require Foo; line, you get the error Can't locate object method "method" via package "Foo" at script.pl line 9. perl needs the require statement to find and compile the source files.

Thanks.. though, I understood that it (the use statement) would be required for something I explicitly created in code.

I was just thrown off by the built-in nature of STDOUT and its ilk; I thought perhaps IO::Handle would have already been 'used', thus the methods would've been available, but that somehow I wasn't doing it "right". Thanks for the example.

Okay, so even though STDOUT is, by default, a blessed IO::Handle object, and thus possesses the methods described, perl needs to be directed to the IO::Handle module via the 'use' statement so it can find the definitions for those methods. Does that sum it up correctly?

Okay, so even though STDOUT is, by default, a blessed IO::Handle object, and thus possesses the methods described, perl needs to be directed to the IO::Handle module via the 'use' statement so it can find the definitions for those methods. Does that sum it up correctly?

Unfortunately, it's all wrong.

• STDOUT isn't blessed. It's not a reference, so it can't be blessed. Globs only act as if they are blessed references.

• Given a blessed reference or a glob, Perl knows where to look for the methods. For globs, it looks in the IO::Handle namespace.

• Loading a module doesn't help Perl find anything. It typically loads subroutines. IO::Handle is no exception.

Perl knows where to look for the method (as indicated by the error message), but there's nothing to find (as indicated in the error message) because IO::Handle wasn't loaded (which isn't indicated in the error message).