Contact inherits Main. That means the Contact namespace will also include a copy of all the symbols of the Main namespace plus whatever it defines for itself.

That's actually not how inheritance works in Perl. The parent class's symbols do not get exported to the child class. When a method is called on the child class with the arrow (->) syntax, if that subroutine is not defined in the child class, then Perl searches the parent class(es) for it, and then finally tries AUTOLOAD if that doesn't work.

Update: Fixed typo

Great, that helps. Is there any other way to include Common.pm in Main.pm that would include the symbol for Common::show_here?

Well, seeing as you are using CGI::Application, see the docs about making a plugin. Most of the existing plugins are just simple wrappers around CPAN modules so you can use them as examples.

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જલધર

Hi, bradcathey,

$ cat Common.pm
package Common;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Exporter;
our @ISA = qw(Exporter); # borrows import()
our @EXPORT = qw(show_here);

sub show_here { }

1;

$ cat Main.pm 
package Common;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Common;

sub show_me {}

1;
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The caller of Main.pm has direct access to show_me() and show_here() using qualified name,

Main::show_here; # since exported by default by Common.pm
Main::show_me; # originally in Main.pm
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If the caller has its own use Common then it doesn't have to qualify it, show_here() is enough.

However, if you meant that "a way to include Common.pm in Main.pm so Contact.pm can use show_here directly, then make Main.pm to reexport the function.

package Main;
....
use Exporter;
use Common;
our @ISA = qw(Exporter); # borrows import()
our @EXPORT = qw(show_here); # just @Common::Export to export 
                             # what ever Common exports.
....
sub show_me {}
1;
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The caller,

use Main;
Main::show_me();
show_here()
[download]

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