NAME namespace::alias - Lexical aliasing of namespaces SYNOPSIS use namespace::alias 'My::Company::Namespace::Customer'; # plain aliasing of a namespace my $cust = Customer->new; # My::Company::Namespace::Customer->new # namespaces relative to the alias my $pref = Customer::Preferred->new; # My::Company::Namespace::Customer::Preferred->new # getting the expansion of an alias my $customer_class = Customer; # also works for packages relative to the alias my $preferred_class = Customer::Preferred; # calling a function in an aliased namespace Customer::some_func() DESCRIPTION This module allows you to load packages and use them with a shorter name within a lexical scope. This is how you load a module and install an alias for it: use namespace::alias 'Some::Class'; This will load "Some::Class" and install the alias "Class" for it. You may also specify the name of the alias explicitly: use namespace::alias 'Some::Class', 'MyAlias'; This will load "Some::Class" and install the alias "MyAlias" for it. After installing the alias, every method or function call using it will be expanded to the full namespace. Addressing namespaces relative to the aliased namespace is also possible: MyAlias::Bar->new; # this expands to Some::Class::Bar->new Aliases may also used as barewords. They will expand to a string with the full namespace: To load a module and install an alias for it, do my $foo = MyAlias; # 'Some::Class' my $bar = MyAlias::Bar; # 'Some::Class::Bar' This also means that function calls to aliased namespaces need to be followed with parens. If they aren't, they're expanded to strings instead. MyAlias::some_func(); MyAlias::Bar::some_func(); Also note that the created aliases are lexical and available at compile-time only. They may also shadow existing packages for the scope they are installed in: { package Foo::Bar; sub baz { 0xaffe } package Baz; sub baz { 42 } } Baz::baz(); # 42 { use namespace::alias 'Foo::Bar', 'Baz'; Baz::baz(); # 0xaffe } Bar::baz(); # 42 SEE ALSO aliased AUTHOR Florian Ragwitz With contributions from: Robert 'phaylon' Sedlacek Steffen Schwigon COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE Copyright (c) 2009 Florian Ragwitz Licensed under the same terms as perl itself.