Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Ok, here is the situation: I have a file x.pm consisting of this two lines
use strict;
use base Exporter;

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When I "use x;" or "perl -Mx" I get an "Unknown error", "perl x.pm" says whats wrong. Why the difference? And why doesnt stand Exporter for itself anymore?

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Re: Unknown error
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 01, 2006 at 16:04 UTC

    The problem is that the arguments of use base are supposed to be strings. Change your code to this: 

    use strict;
use base 'Exporter';

1;

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    You'll also need to have that final 'true' value, or there will be an error loading your module. (Try it and see.)

    We're building the house of the future together.
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      Yes I know (now). "perl x.pm" explained it to me. As I said in the OP. My question is about the diff in use vs main. And in older perl a word (especially a package name) would be seen as a string const of itself when no function of this name was declared. Why not here? In e.g. new it is so.
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        What difference? Copy and paste
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Re: Unknown error
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Mar 01, 2006 at 18:56 UTC

    I narrowed the bug: Compile time strict sub violations in required modules result in Unknown error.

    • Other strict violations output the correct error message.
    • Run-time strict sub violations output the correct error message.
    • strict sub violations in the main file output the correct error message.

    Read more... My Tests (2 kB)
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Re: Unknown error
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Mar 01, 2006 at 18:26 UTC

    Update: Oops! Misread OP. Ignore this post.

    I get the same error message both ways: 

    >perl -v
This is perl, v5.6.1 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
...

>perl -Mx -e ""
Unknown error
Compilation failed in require.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.

>perl -e "use x;"
Unknown error
Compilation failed in require at -e line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at -e line 1.

>perl script.pl
Unknown error
Compilation failed in require at script.pl line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at script.pl line 1.

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    and 

    >perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.0 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
...

>perl -Mx -e ""
Unknown error
Compilation failed in require.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.

>perl -e "use x;"
Unknown error
Compilation failed in require at -e line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at -e line 1.

>perl script.pl
Unknown error
Compilation failed in require at script.pl line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at script.pl line 1.

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      not "perl script.pl" where script.pl probably contains "use x", "perl x.pm" instead. In "::main" instead of "use".
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