In order to be effective, the require() has to be executed before the rest of the code is compiled. You can make this happen by putting it (and the conditional that causes it to execute) inside a BEGIN block:

BEGIN {
    if ( $^O eq =~ m/MSWin32/i ) {
        ...
        require Win32::OLE;
        Win32::OLE->import( qw{ in } );
    }
}

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The BEGIN is unconditionally executed as soon as it finishes compiling, and before anything below it compiles. Note that there is no colon after the BEGIN. If you insert the colon it becomes a labelled block; this is syntactically valid so you don't get an error, but it will not do what you want.

On the other hand, there's always use if ....

In reply to Re: Odd WMI situation by Anonymous Monk
in thread Odd WMI situation by Anonymous Monk

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