I think it's mainly defined by pure convention as intended by the module author's idea of the modules interface. Seems, the module author's intention here was to let the argument resemble a command-line option switch.

Basically use Module qw(a b c d); is translated to BEGIN{ require Module; Module->import(qw(a b c d)); } (see use).

In Module::import(), the author has the freedom to do anything with the given list (after removing the module's name from the parameter list) like using it as-is ... @list = qw(a b c d) ... or interpreting it as a flattened hash ... %pairs = (a => 'b', c => 'd') ... or as a parameter list ... my($a,$b,$c,$d) = qw(a b c d) ... and so on. Then s/he can treat the arguments as needed, like filtering, grouping, normalizing, etc.

In this case: less `perldoc -l English` 

...
# Grandfather $NAME import
sub import {
    my $this = shift;                              # 'English'
    my @list = grep { ! /^-no_match_vars$/ } @_ ;  # anything that is 
+not '-no_match_vars'
    local $Exporter::ExportLevel = 1; 
    if ( @_ == @list ) {
...

[download]

In reply to Re: import list by Perlbotics
in thread import list by 7stud

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.