use,require,do,my and local

• my() vs. use vars:

  With use vars(), you are making an entry in the symbol table, and you are telling the compiler that you are going to be referencing that entry without an explicit package name.

  With my(), NO ENTRY IS PUT IN THE SYMBOL TABLE. The compiler figures out at compile time which my() variables (i.e. lexical variables) are the same as each other, and once you hit execute time you cannot look up those variables in the symbol table.

• my() vs. local():

  local() creates a temporal-limited package-based scalar, array, hash, or glob -- that's to say, when the scope of definition is exited at runtime, the previous value (if any) is restored. References to such a variable are also global ... only the value changes. (Aside: that is what causes variable suicide. :)

  my() creates a lexically limited nonpackage-based scalar, array, or hash -- when the scope of definition is exited at compile-time, the variable ceases to be accessible. Any references to such a variable at runtime turn into unique anonymous variables on each scope exit.

use(), require(), do(), %INC and @INC Explained

The @INC Array

@INC is a special Perl variable that is the equivalent to the shell's PATH variable. Whereas PATH@INC contains a list of directories from which Perl modules and libraries can be loaded. contains a list of directories to search for executables,

When you use(), require() or do() a filename or a module, Perl gets a list of directories from the @INC variable and searches them for the file it was requested to load. If the file that you want to load is not located in one of the listed directories, then you have to tell Perl where to find the file. You can either provide a path relative to one of the directories in @INC, or you can provide the full path to the file.

The %INC Hash

%INC is another special Perl variable that is used to cache the names of the files and the modules that were successfully loaded and compiled by use(), require() or do() statements. Before attempting to load a file or a module with use() or require(), Perl checks whether it's already in the %INC hash. If it's there, then the loading and therefore the compilation are not performed at all. Otherwise, the file is loaded into memory and an attempt is made to compile it. do() does unconditional loading -- no lookup in the %INC hash is made.

If the file is successfully loaded and compiled, then a new key-value pair is added to %INC. The key is the name of the file or module as it was passed to the one of the three functions we have just mentioned. If it was found in any of the @INC directories except ".", then the value is the full path to it in the file system.

The following examples will make it easier to understand the logic.

First, let's see what are the contents of @INC on my system:

% perl -e 'print join "\n", @INC'
/usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/i386-linux
/usr/lib/perl5/5.00503
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
.

Notice that . (current directory) is the last directory in the list.

Now let's load the module strict.pm and see the contents of %INC:

% perl -e 'use strict; print map {"$_ => $INC{$_}\n"} keys %INC'

strict.pm => /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/strict.pm

Since strict.pm was found in /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/ directory and /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/ is a part of @INC, %INC includes the full path as the value for the key strict.pm