


base(3p)         Perl Programmers Reference Guide        base(3p)


NAME
       base - Establish IS-A relationship with base class at com-
       pile time

SYNOPSIS
           package Baz;
           use base qw(Foo Bar);


DESCRIPTION
       Roughly similar in effect to

           BEGIN {
               require Foo;
               require Bar;
               push @ISA, qw(Foo Bar);
           }

       Will also initialize the %FIELDS hash if one of the base
       classes has it.  Multiple inheritance of %FIELDS is not
       supported.  The 'base' pragma will croak if multiple base
       classes have a %FIELDS hash.  See the fields manpage for a
       description of this feature.

       When strict 'vars' is in scope base also let you assign to
       @ISA without having to declare @ISA with the 'vars' pragma
       first.

       If any of the base classes are not loaded yet, base
       silently "require"s them.  Whether to "require" a base
       class package is determined by the absence of a global
       $VERSION in the base package.  If $VERSION is not detected
       even after loading it, <base> will define $VERSION in the
       base package, setting it to the string "-1, set by
       base.pm".

HISTORY
       This module was introduced with Perl 5.004_04.

SEE ALSO
       the fields manpage
















2001-05-24                 perl v5.6.1                          1


