By "private" do you mean it can be only called from inside your actual module? If so, then you could do something like this. You can get around it, but it requires a bit of effort (and the know-how). Here's a function to turn any method into a private method.

sub privacy {
  my $owner = __PACKAGE__;
  my ($pkg, $file, $func) = (caller 1)[0,1,3];

  unless ($pkg eq $owner and $file eq __FILE__) {
    require Carp;
    Carp::croak("'$func' is a private method of $owner");
  }
}
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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a (from-home) job
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