It is not obsolete, require is used. One use case:

Usually there's a line reading

1;

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as the last evaluated statement in a module file, since require demands a true value from an included file.

As LanX pointed out, use is sort of a wrapper around require, but it doesn't return anything, it throws away the value returned by require. It is even a syntax error trying to assign from it: 

$result = use Some::Module; # illegal

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So you cannot assign from use, but you can from require. This is useful to load e.g. a config stash or getting back a data structure captured from Data::Dumper or Data::Dump into a file: 

# file hash.pl
# anonymous hash reference
{
  name => 'foo',
  data => [1,2,3],
}
__END__

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#!/usr/bin/perl
# file program.pl

use strict; use warnings;
use Data::Dump;
my $var = require './hash.pl';
dd $var;
__END__

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Output:

{ data => [1, 2, 3], name => "foo" }

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Of course, you can do arbitrary computations in the required file.

If you just want the last computed value from a file without having to declare an our variable in both source and target, or using Exporter, this is the way to do it - if you expect a true value to be returned. Otherwise, you would do FILE.

perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

In reply to Re: Is require still required? by shmem
in thread Is require still required? by Bod

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