They work somewhat like compiler directives (pragmata) in that they tend to affect the compilation of your program, and thus will usually work well only when used within a use, or no. Most of these are lexically scoped, so an inner BLOCK may countermand them by saying:
no integer;
no strict 'refs';
no warnings;
which lasts until the end of that BLOCK.
Some pragmas are lexically scoped--typically those that affect the $^H hints variable. Others affect the current package instead, like use vars and use subs, which allow you to predeclare a variables or subroutines within a particular file rather than just a block. Such declarations are effective for the entire file for which they were declared. You cannot rescind them with no vars or no subs.
The following pragmas are defined (and have their own documentation).
attributes - Get/set subroutine or variable attributes
attrs - Set/get attributes of a subroutine (deprecated)
autouse - Postpone load of modules until a function is used
base - Establish IS-A relationship with base class at compile time
blib - Use MakeMaker's uninstalled version of a package
caller - Inherit pragmatic attributes from caller's context
charnames - Define character names for \N{named} string literal escape.
constant - Declare constants
diagnostics - Force verbose warning diagnostics
fields - Declare a class's attribute fields at compile-time
filetest - Control the filetest operators like -r, -w for AFS, etc.
integer - Compute arithmetic in integer instead of double
less - Request less of something from the compiler (unimplemented)
lib - Manipulate @INC at compile time
locale - Use or avoid POSIX locales for built-in operations
ops - Restrict unsafe operations when compiling
overload - Overload Perl operations
re - Alter regular expression behavior
sigtrap - Enable simple signal handling
strict - Restrict unsafe constructs
subs - Predeclare subroutine names
utf8 - Turn on UTF-8 and Unicode support
vars - Predeclare global variable names (obsoleted by our())
warnings - Control optional warnings
Standard, bundled modules are all expected to behave in a well-defined manner with respect to namespace pollution because they use the Exporter module. See their own documentation for details.
AnyDBM_File - Provide framework for multiple DBM libraries
AutoLoader - Load subroutines only on demand
AutoSplit - Split a package for autoloading
B - Guts of the Perl code generator (aka compiler)
B::Asmdata - Autogenerated data about Perl ops, used to generate bytecode
B::Assembler - Assemble Perl bytecode
B::Bblock - Walk basic blocks
B::Bytecode - Perl compiler's bytecode backend
B::C - Perl compiler's C backend
B::CC - Perl compiler's optimized C translation backend
B::Debug - Walk Perl syntax tree, printing debug info about ops
B::Deparse - Perl compiler backend to produce Perl code
B::Disassembler - Disassemble Perl bytecode
B::Lint - Module to catch dubious constructs
B::Showlex - Show lexical variables used in functions or files
B::Stackobj - Helper module for CC backend
B::Stash -- XXX NFI XXX
B::Terse - Walk Perl syntax tree, printing terse info about ops
B::Xref - Generates cross reference reports for Perl programs
Benchmark - Benchmark running times of code
ByteLoader - Load byte-compiled Perl code
CGI - Simple Common Gateway Interface class
CGI::Apache - Make things work with CGI.pm against Perl-Apache API
CGI::Carp - CGI routines for writing to the HTTPD (or other) error log
CGI::Cookie - Interface to Netscape Cookies
CGI::Fast - CGI Interface for Fast CGI
CGI::Pretty - Module to produce nicely formatted HTML code
CGI::Push - Simple Interface to Server Push
CGI::Switch - Try more than one constructors and return the first object available
CPAN - Query, download, and build Perl modules from CPAN sites
CPAN::FirstTime - Utility for CPAN::Config file initialization
CPAN::Nox - Wrapper around CPAN.pm without using any XS module
Carp - Act like warn/die from perspective of caller
Carp::Heavy - Carp guts
Class::Struct - Declare struct-like datatypes as Perl classes
Config - Access Perl configuration information
Cwd - Get pathname of current working directory
DB - Programmatic interface to the Perl debugging API (experimental)
DB_File - Perl5 access to Berkeley DB version 1.x
Data::Dumper - Serialize Perl data structures
Devel::DProf - A Perl execution profiler
Devel::Peek - A data debugging tool for the XS programmer
Devel::SelfStubber - Generate stubs for a SelfLoading module
DirHandle - Supply object methods for directory handles
Dumpvalue - Provide screen dump of Perl data
DynaLoader - Dynamically load C libraries into Perl code
English - Use English (or awk) names for ugly punctuation variables
Env - Access environment variables as regular ones
Errno - Load the libc errno.h defines
Exporter - Implement default import method for modules
Exporter::Heavy - Exporter guts
ExtUtils::Command - Utilities to replace common Unix commands in Makefiles etc.
ExtUtils::Embed - Utilities for embedding Perl in C/C++ programs
ExtUtils::Install - Install files from here to there
ExtUtils::Installed - Inventory management of installed modules
ExtUtils::Liblist - Determine libraries to use and how to use them
ExtUtils::MM_Cygwin - Methods to override Unix behavior in ExtUtils::MakeMaker
ExtUtils::MM_OS2 - Methods to override Unix behavior in ExtUtils::MakeMaker
ExtUtils::MM_Unix - Methods used by ExtUtils::MakeMaker
ExtUtils::MM_VMS - Methods to override Unix behavior in ExtUtils::MakeMaker
ExtUtils::MM_Win32 - Methods to override Unix behavior in ExtUtils::MakeMaker
ExtUtils::MakeMaker - Create an extension Makefile
ExtUtils::Manifest - Utilities to write and check a MANIFEST file
ExtUtils::Miniperl, writemain - Write the C code for perlmain.c
ExtUtils::Mkbootstrap - Make a bootstrap file for use by DynaLoader
ExtUtils::Mksymlists - Write linker options files for dynamic extension
ExtUtils::Packlist - Manage .packlist files
ExtUtils::testlib - Add blib/* directories to @INC
Fatal - Replace functions with equivalents which succeed or die
Fcntl - Load the libc fcntl.h defines
File::Basename - Split a pathname into pieces
File::CheckTree - Run many filetest checks on a tree
File::Compare - Compare files or filehandles
File::Copy - Copy files or filehandles
File::DosGlob - DOS-like globbing and then some
File::Find - Traverse a file tree
File::Glob - Perl extension for BSD filename globbing
File::Path - Create or remove a series of directories
File::Spec - Portably perform operations on file names
File::Spec::Functions - Portably perform operations on file names
File::Spec::Mac - File::Spec for MacOS
File::Spec::OS2 - Methods for OS/2 file specs
File::Spec::Unix - Methods used by File::Spec
File::Spec::VMS - Methods for VMS file specs
File::Spec::Win32 - Methods for Win32 file specs
File::stat - By-name interface to Perl's built-in stat() functions
FileCache - Keep more files open than the system permits
FileHandle - Supply object methods for filehandles
FindBin - Locate installation directory of running Perl program
GDBM_File - Access to the gdbm library
Getopt::Long - Extended processing of command line options
Getopt::Std - Process single-character switches with switch clustering
I18N::Collate - Compare 8-bit scalar data according to current locale
IO - Front-end to load various IO modules
IO::Dir - Supply object methods for directory handles
IO::File - Supply object methods for filehandles
IO::Handle - Supply object methods for I/O handles
IO::Pipe - Supply object methods for pipes
IO::Poll - Object interface to system poll call
IO::Seekable - Supply seek based methods for I/O objects
IO::Select - OO interface to the select system call
IO::Socket - Object interface to socket communications
IO::Socket::INET - Object interface for AF_INET domain sockets
IO::Socket::UNIX - Object interface for AF_UNIX domain sockets
IPC::Msg - SysV Msg IPC object class
IPC::Open2 - Open a process for both reading and writing
IPC::Open3 - Open a process for reading, writing, and error handling
IPC::Semaphore - SysV Semaphore IPC object class
IPC::SysV - SysV IPC constants
Math::BigFloat - Arbitrary length float math package
Math::BigInt - Arbitrary size integer math package
Math::Complex - Complex numbers and associated mathematical functions
Math::Trig - Trigonometric functions
Net::Ping - Check a remote host for reachability
Net::hostent - By-name interface to Perl's built-in gethost*() functions
Net::netent - By-name interface to Perl's built-in getnet*() functions
Net::protoent - By-name interface to Perl's built-in getproto*() functions
Net::servent - By-name interface to Perl's built-in getserv*() functions
O - Generic interface to Perl Compiler backends
Opcode - Disable named opcodes when compiling Perl code
POSIX - Perl interface to IEEE Std 1003.1
Pod::Checker - Check pod documents for syntax errors
Pod::Html - Module to convert pod files to HTML
Pod::InputObjects - Manage POD objects
Pod::Man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
Pod::Parser - Base class for creating POD filters and translators
Pod::Select - Extract selected sections of POD from input
Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
Pod::Text::Color - Convert POD data to formatted color ASCII text
Pod::Usage - Print a usage message from embedded pod documentation
SDBM_File - Tied access to sdbm files
Safe - Compile and execute code in restricted compartments
Search::Dict - Search for key in dictionary file
SelectSaver - Save and restore selected file handle
SelfLoader - Load functions only on demand
Shell - Run shell commands transparently within Perl
Socket - Load the libc socket.h defines and structure manipulators
Symbol - Manipulate Perl symbols and their names
Sys::Hostname - Try every conceivable way to get hostname
Sys::Syslog - Interface to the libc syslog(3) calls
Term::Cap - Termcap interface
Term::Complete - Word completion module
Term::ReadLine - Interface to various `readline' packages.
Test - Provides a simple framework for writing test scripts
Test::Harness - Run Perl standard test scripts with statistics
Text::Abbrev - Create an abbreviation table from a list
Text::ParseWords - Parse text into a list of tokens or array of arrays
Text::Soundex - Implementation of the Soundex Algorithm as described by Knuth
Text::Tabs -- expand and unexpand tabs per expand(1) and unexpand(1)
Text::Wrap - Line wrapping to form simple paragraphs
Tie::Array - Base class for tied arrays
Tie::Handle - Base class definitions for tied handles
Tie::Hash - Base class definitions for tied hashes
Tie::RefHash - Use references as hash keys
Tie::Scalar - Base class definitions for tied scalars
Tie::SubstrHash - Fixed-table-size, fixed-key-length hashing
Time::Local - Efficiently compute time from local and GMT time
Time::gmtime - By-name interface to Perl's built-in gmtime() function
Time::localtime - By-name interface to Perl's built-in localtime() function
Time::tm - Internal object used by Time::gmtime and Time::localtime
UNIVERSAL - Base class for ALL classes (blessed references)
User::grent - By-name interface to Perl's built-in getgr*() functions
User::pwent - By-name interface to Perl's built-in getpw*() functions