Imports some semantics into the current package from the named module, generally by aliasing certain subroutine or variable names into your package. It is exactly equivalent to

    BEGIN { require Module; Module->import( LIST ); }

except that Module must be a bareword.

In the peculiar use VERSION form, VERSION may be either a numeric argument such as 5.006, which will be compared to $] , or a literal of the form v5.6.1, which will be compared to $^V (aka $PERL_VERSION). A fatal error is produced if VERSION is greater than the version of the current Perl interpreter; Perl will not attempt to parse the rest of the file. Compare with "require", which can do a similar check at run time. Symmetrically, no VERSION allows you to specify that you want a version of perl older than the specified one.

Specifying VERSION as a literal of the form v5.6.1 should generally be avoided, because it leads to misleading error messages under earlier versions of Perl that do not support this syntax. The equivalent numeric version should be used instead.

Alternatively, you can use a numeric version use 5.006 followed by a v-string version like use v5.10.1 , to avoid the unintuitive use 5.010_001 . (older perl versions fail gracefully at the first use, later perl versions understand the v-string syntax in the second).

    use v5.6.1;		# compile time version check
    use 5.6.1;		# ditto
    use 5.006_001;	# ditto; preferred for backwards compatibility
    use 5.006; use 5.6.1;	# ditto, for compatibility and readability

This is often useful if you need to check the current Perl version before useing library modules that have changed in incompatible ways from older versions of Perl. (We try not to do this more than we have to.)

Also, if the specified perl version is greater than or equal to 5.9.5, use VERSION will also load the feature pragma and enable all features available in the requested version. See feature.

The BEGIN forces the require and import to happen at compile time. The require makes sure the module is loaded into memory if it hasn't been yet. The import is not a builtin--it's just an ordinary static method call into the Module package to tell the module to import the list of features back into the current package. The module can implement its import method any way it likes, though most modules just choose to derive their import method via inheritance from the Exporter class that is defined in the Exporter module. See Exporter. If no import method can be found then the call is skipped, even if there is an AUTOLOAD method.

If you do not want to call the package's import method (for instance, to stop your namespace from being altered), explicitly supply the empty list:

    use Module ();

That is exactly equivalent to

    BEGIN { require Module }

If the VERSION argument is present between Module and LIST, then the use will call the VERSION method in class Module with the given version as an argument. The default VERSION method, inherited from the UNIVERSAL class, croaks if the given version is larger than the value of the variable $Module::VERSION .

Again, there is a distinction between omitting LIST (import called with no arguments) and an explicit empty LIST () (import not called). Note that there is no comma after VERSION!

Because this is a wide-open interface, pragmas (compiler directives) are also implemented this way. Currently implemented pragmas are:

    use constant;
    use diagnostics;
    use integer;
    use sigtrap  qw(SEGV BUS);
    use strict   qw(subs vars refs);
    use subs     qw(afunc blurfl);
    use warnings qw(all);
    use sort     qw(stable _quicksort _mergesort);

Some of these pseudo-modules import semantics into the current block scope (like strict or integer , unlike ordinary modules, which import symbols into the current package (which are effective through the end of the file).

There's a corresponding no command that unimports meanings imported by use, i.e., it calls unimport Module LIST instead of import. It behaves exactly as import does with respect to VERSION, an omitted LIST, empty LIST, or no unimport method being found.

    no integer;
    no strict 'refs';
    no warnings;

See perlmodlib for a list of standard modules and pragmas. See perlrun for the -M and -m command-line options to perl that give use functionality from the command-line.