How to enable Perl features via command line?

Question

I want to enable say feature (but also all the others). I know that if I write the code on the command line, I can use -E option instead of -e. But if I am running a script:

perl script.pl

I cannot use -E. I don't want to put use feature say in the script; I want to use command line option. What kind of option can I use here? I have not been able to figure this out from the documentation.

Answer 1

You can import a module with the -M switch. In general,

-MFoo=bar,baz

is equivalent to

use Foo (split /,/ 'bar,baz');

So here, we would do -Mfeature=say or load a feature bundle like -M5.010.

However, I'd recommend specifying any features you use inside the script itself. This will avoid confusing errors when you forget to specify the switch.

Answer 2

I made a bash alias:

alias sperl='perl -Mfeature=say'

now I can do stuff like

~/perl$ sperl -e "say 'hi'"
hi