calling module with empty import

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

All Perl Pisthus,

use Module (); # Imports Nothing
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What is the realtime use of the above code ? Calling a module forcing not to import anything ?

Comment on calling module with empty import Download Code

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Re: calling module with empty import by gaal (Parson) on May 17, 2007 at 07:25 UTC
Export/import happens in Perl by convention: "`use Module`" calls `Module::import`, which typically does some initialization and places symbols in the caller's namespace. It's recommended that module authors not export things by default, but some modules don't follow that recommendation. For example, YAML exports `Dump` and `Load`. What if your code already defines subs with those names? You still want to be able to use YAML's functions, e.g. by saying `YAML::Dump($obj)`, but you don't want the default import. So you "import" (), and `YAML::import` never gets called. Note that if YAML.pm had had some important initialization it only did in its import sub, that would be missed.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: calling module with empty import by Zaxo (Archbishop) on May 17, 2007 at 07:20 UTC
Yes, that prevents default imports. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply]
Re: calling module with empty import by ysth (Canon) on May 17, 2007 at 08:14 UTC
More declaring that you aren't interested in anything that might be exported. It's a useful piece of auto-documentation even when the used module doesn't even have an import routine.	[reply]
Re: calling module with empty import by perrin (Chancellor) on May 17, 2007 at 13:53 UTC
As others said, it prevents importing of default symbols. It's common to see this in long-running daemon environments like mod_perl and FastCGI, since it reduces the memory footprint of the process. Every imported symbol costs some memory.	[reply]