use base ... does more than simply add stuff to @ISA; it also uses the modules. If you add use Exporter; to your version that modifies @ISA, it should work as you expected.

yours,
Michael

Thanks, that makes sense to me now. perldoc base:

'use base qw[Foo Bar]' is roughly equivalent to:
BEGIN {
    require Foo;
    require Bar;
    push @ISA, qw(Foo Bar);
}

...

If any of the base classes are not loaded yet, *base*
silently "require"s them.
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It seems like quite a subtle bug to fall into - you can use @ISA directly to declare a subclass of Exporter and think you're getting an import method from the superclass, but actually because you haven't loaded Exporter, silently nothing will happen when you use the subpackage...

cheers
ViceRaid

It seems like quite a subtle bug to fall into

Yes it does. But what it says to me is: "Don't export. Use the OO scheme fully instead. Minimize use of globals and declare and use them in one file only."

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com

All code given here is UNTESTED unless otherwise stated.

Also note that "-M Foo" is *not* the same as "use Foo;". Perlrun says:

       -M[-]module
       -M[-]'module ...'
       -[mM][-]module=arg[,arg]...
            -mmodule executes "use" module "();" before executing
            your program.

            -Mmodule executes "use" module ";" before executing
            your program.  You can use quotes to add extra code
            after the module name, e.g., '-Mmodule qw(foo bar)'.

            If the first character after the -M or -m is a dash
            ("-") then the 'use' is replaced with 'no'.

            A little builtin syntactic sugar means you can also
            say -mmodule=foo,bar or -Mmodule=foo,bar as a short-
            cut for '-Mmodule qw(foo bar)'.  This avoids the need
            to use quotes when importing symbols.  The actual
            code generated by -Mmodule=foo,bar is "use module
            split(/,/,q{foo,bar})".  Note that the "=" form
            removes the distinction between -m and -M.
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The important part is:

-mmodule executes "use" module "();"
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Note the trailing (), meaning that the modules import routine will not be called. So, Exporter won't export the variables.

Abigail

Thanks Abigail

Are you sure you need the 'use lib' in the "second thing"? For me it works with just the 'use Totally::Fake', without the need of 'use lib'.

I've double-checked it and stripped it down to it's barest bones:

### Totally/Fake.pm
use strict;

package Totally::Fake;
our @ISA = qw(Exporter);
our ($fake, $faker);
our @EXPORT = qw($fake $faker);

### my_script.pl
use strict;

# uncomment this to make it work
# use lib '/long/path/to/nowhere';

use Totally::Fake;
print $fake;
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... and I'm still getting the odd behaviour (perl 5.8.0).

Also note that "-M Foo" is *not* the same as "use Foo;" ... -Mmodule executes "use" module ";" before executing your program. (perldoc perlrun)

Doesn't this mean -MFoo == use Foo; but -mFoo != use Foo;? In that -M will call the import routine for the default set of symbols, but -m will not call it.

Cheers
ViceRaid

Your Totally/Fake.pm doesn't have a "use Exporter;". How adding 'use lib' makes perl compile my_script.pl seems like a bug to me.

Doesn't this mean -MFoo == use Foo; but -mFoo != use Foo;? In that -M will call the import routine for the default set of symbols, but -m will not call it.

Yes it does. I completely misread.

Abigail