As others have pointed out, use base makes the named module a superclass of the current package (and so you should really be writing an OO module in that case).

I'd just add that in OO terms, if you pull in a package with use base then you are declaring an is-a relationship. Your package is an Exporter, with some additional custom behaviour.

If you pull in a module in order to make use of the facilities it provides, it is much more like a has-a relationship. If I write an OO module and use XML::LibXML it is quite likely that my object will have some object's from that module as data members.

This isn't 100%, since you might make use of a module's facilities purely within one method and never save off a data member (e.g. use Dumper), but it can be a helpful way of thinking about it.

In reply to Re: Twofer: 'use base' vs 'use'; and SuperSearch by jbert
in thread Twofer: 'use base' vs 'use'; and SuperSearch by throop

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.