use Exporter; or create object-oriented classes (see perlboot, perltoot, perltooc).

I think Exporter will do the trick for me. Since I am new to perl, please ignore my little ignorance, I am bit confused regarding where should I place my authenticate.pm (intented name of the package!) Ideally I'd like to keep it under cgi-bin/lib dir, no prob in that but where I am stuck is how do I call this routine from other directories under cgi-bin? So to give an example, if I am writing another script under cgi-bin/monthSale/mSale.pm and want to call authenticate.pm in mSale.pm, how do I do this?

There's a special variable called @INC, it contains the paths in which perl looks for modules when you use one.
An easy way to add directiories to @INC is the lib module.
Just put these lines into the module/script that needs to call subroutines in authenticate.pm.

use lib '/path/to/your/module_dir'; # can be relative, too
use authenticate.pm;
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snowcrash

Well, I assume that you are calling your script mSale.pl, and not .pm. First of all, I strongly descourage you to put your libraries in any place where a web user can get. Said that, suppose you are putting your authenticate.pm in /usr/lib/cgi. Then you'll want to start your script with something such:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict ; # ...and...
use warnings ; # always!

# let your cgi find authenticate.pm in /usr/lib/cgi...
use lib '/usr/lib/cgi' ;

# ...and you are safe ;-)
use authenticate.pm

# your CGI goes here :-)
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I hope this helps

Ciao!
--bronto

---

The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz

Not to mention perldoc perlmod. And I seem to recall there being some really big site with all sorts of perl code with modules somewhere on the net that might have one or two relevant examples.

Undefined subroutine &main::ret called at test.pl line 11.

Here is my sample code -

package nu;
use Exporter;
@ISA = qw( Exporter );
@EXPORT_OK = qw( &ret );
my $action = $ARGV[0];
sub ret{
  my $str = $action ? $action : 'Nop';
  return $str;
}

 1;
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----
---
use lib '/mydir/lib';
use nu;

my $gat = ret('one4u');
print "Value is $gat \n";
----
---
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@EXPORT_OK just tell what can be imported from this package. If you want to set some default things to be exported by the package you should set the array @EXPORT too.

Soo, @EXPORT_OK just tells what we can import explicity:

  use nu qw( &some_funtion $var $array %etc ) ;
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And @EXPORT set what the package export when you don't paste anything:

  use nu ;
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Take a look in the documentation of Export: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/Exporter.html

Other thing, try to build a pure Object-Oriented module, soo you will be able to use it in any type of application (console, GUI, CGI, mod_perl, etc...). One bad thing that you are doing is the action variablr, dependent of the arguments paste when the applications is executed by console.

Here's a simple example to start building an OO module:

package FOO ;

use strict qw(vars);
use vars qw($VERSION) ;
$VERSION = '0.01' ;

sub new {
  ## The class name:
  my $class = shift ;
  ## Arguments when creating the object:
  my ( $arg1 , $arg2 , @rest ) = @_ ; 
  ## Define from what package this object will be:
  my $this = bless({} , $class) ;
  
  ## Define some internal value/attribute in the object:
  $this->{FOO} = $arg1 ;

  ## Return the created object:
  return $this ;
}

sub methodx {
  ## The object reference:
  my $this = shift ;
  ## Arguments of this method:
  my ( $arg1 , $arg2 , @rest ) = @_ ;
  ...
}

1;
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To use this module and create an object:

  use FOO ;

  my $foo = new FOO("some args") ;

  my @returned = $foo->methodx("other args") ;
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Graciliano M. P.
"Creativity is the expression of the liberty".