Name
require
Synopsis
require filename require num require package
Asserts a dependency of some kind depending on its
argument. (If an argument is not supplied, $_
is used.)
If the argument is a string
filename
, this function includes and
executes the Perl code found in the separate file of that name.
This is similar to performing an eval
on the contents of the file, except
that require
checks to see that
the library file has not been included already. The function also
knows how to search the include path stored in the @INC
array.
If require
s argument is a
number num
, the version number of the
currently executing Perl binary (as known by $]
) is compared to
num
. If it is smaller, execution is
immediately aborted. Thus, a script that requires Perl version
5.003 can have as its first line:
require 5.003;
and earlier versions of Perl will abort.
If require
’s argument is
a package name, require
assumes
an automatic .pm suffix, making it easy to
load standard modules. This is like use
, except that it happens at runtime,
not compile time, and the import
routine is not called.
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