parent(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide parent(3pm)

# [NAME](#NAME)

parent - Establish an ISA relationship with base classes at compile time

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

```
    package Baz;
    use parent qw(Foo Bar);
```

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

Allows you to both load one or more modules, while setting up inheritance from those modules at the same time. Mostly similar in effect to

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

By default, every base class needs to live in a file of its own. If you want to have a subclass and its parent class in the same file, you can tell "parent" not to load any modules by using the "-norequire" switch:

```
  package Foo;
  sub exclaim { "I CAN HAS PERL" }
  package DoesNotLoadFooBar;
  use parent -norequire, 'Foo', 'Bar';
  # will not go looking for Foo.pm or Bar.pm
```

This is equivalent to the following code:

```
  package Foo;
  sub exclaim { "I CAN HAS PERL" }
  package DoesNotLoadFooBar;
  push @DoesNotLoadFooBar::ISA, 'Foo', 'Bar';
```

This is also helpful for the case where a package lives within a differently named file:

```
  package MyHash;
  use Tie::Hash;
  use parent -norequire, 'Tie::StdHash';
```

This is equivalent to the following code:

```
  package MyHash;
  require Tie::Hash;
  push @ISA, 'Tie::StdHash';
```

If you want to load a subclass from a file that "require" would not consider an eligible filename (that is, it does not end in either ".pm" or ".pmc"), use the following code:

```
  package MySecondPlugin;
  require './plugins/custom.plugin'; # contains Plugin::Custom
  use parent -norequire, 'Plugin::Custom';
```

# [HISTORY](#HISTORY)

This module was forked from base to remove the cruft that had accumulated in it.

# [CAVEATS](#CAVEATS)

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

[base](#base)

[parent::versioned](#parent::versioned)

A fork of parent that provides version checking in parent class modules.

# [AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS](#AUTHORS_AND_CONTRIBUTORS)

Rafaël Garcia-Suarez, Bart Lateur, Max Maischein, Anno Siegel, Michael Schwern

# [MAINTAINER](#MAINTAINER)

Max Maischein " corion@cpan.org "

Copyright (c) 2007-2017 Max Maischein "<corion@cpan.org>" Based on the idea of "base.pm", which was introduced with Perl 5.004\_04.

# [LICENSE](#LICENSE)

This module is released under the same terms as Perl itself.

2026-10-26 perl v5.44.0

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Document: parent(3pm) from perl 5.44.0-r3 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://github.com/Perl/perl5.git