subroutine redefined errors has nothing to do with your including 'use' in your library and your script. It implies that you are you have defined a subroutine in the same namespace multiple times. For example, this code would generate that same error.

package Common;

sub my_routine {};
sub my_routine {};
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Without looking at your code that is as much help I can give you.

thanks for all the responses. Exporter ended up having nothing to do with it, i happened to comment out a using line that got rid of my errors and thought it was Exporter related. my first post was not my real code, just trying to show the using hiearchy. Here's a better example of what I have and how I fixed it.

Directory Structure:

• /myapp/
• /myapp/main.pl
• /lib/
• /lib/A/
• /lib/A/Common.pm
• /lib/A/MyLib.pm

psuedo-code

file: /myapp/main.pl
------------------
use lib '..\lib';
use A::Common;
use A::MyLib;

file: /lib/MyLib.pl
--------------------

BEFORE:

use lib '..\lib';
use lib '..\lib\A';
use Common;

AFTER: Changing to this fixed it:

use lib '..\lib';
use A::Common;
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I should note, there were no subroutines duplicated, when it was erroring it had an "subroutine duplicated" error for every subroutine and constant in "Common.pm" which is why I knew it was an issue with the using statements.

You are doing something with Exporter if you are exporting names from a .pm package module. Package is a name space concept. You don't have to export a name but if you don't, you will have to use the fully qualified package name for it, FOO:some_function_4, etc.

A sort of generic header for a FOO package module in the FOO package name space looks like this...(name this file FOO.pm). It is possible to have multiple "packages" within one Perl file. I strongly recommend against this practice.

use strict;
use warnings;
package FOO;
use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT @EXPORT_OK %EXPORT_TAGS $VERSION);
use Exporter;
our $VERSION=1.0;
our @ISA = qw(Exporter);
our @EXPORT = qw(  some_func_name1
                   some_func_name2
         );
our @EXPORT_OK = qw(some_optional_func_name3);
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@ISA is only related to OO inheritance. You have its relationship with Exporter reversed: @ISA/inheritance does not depend on Exporter, Exporter uses inheritance ("MyModule is-a Exporter"). Most OO Perl modules do not use Exporter at all, since there's rarely a reason to export symbols into someone else's namespace if they're going to be using an OO interface to talk to you.

Also, you can do (single) inheritance without (directly) messing with @ISA, thanks to use base. use base 'Exporter'; is equivalent to use Exporter; our @ISA = qw(Exporter);.

Finally, I just noticed as I was finishing up that last sentence that you're declaring the variables in your example with both use vars and our. One or the other is sufficient, you don't need to do both. (Which of the two is preferred is a matter of taste, but they're functionally equivalent.)

This can't be your real code. I won't even compile. I'm fairly certain use Common.pm is not valid. Perhaps you mean use Common;?

Are you using package statements at the tops of your modules? If not, everything is going on in the main:: namespace. This would cause "subroutine redefined" errors if your modules define identically named subroutines. Not sure why Exporter would help though.

perlsub, perlmod, perlmodlib and Modules: How to Create, Install, and Use provide relevant information on name spaces, packages, modules and how they are used, with many examples.