Exporting symbols without Exporter - perl

Question

I am learning how to use packages and objects in Perl.
It has been suggested that I use Exporter in order to use the functions and variables of a module that have the package directive.
I was curious to know whether there is a way to export symbols without using Exporter? In other words, can Exporter be emulated in some way?
The reason I ask is due to my assumption that Exporter carries extra overhead for functionality that small, simple scripts that must run as fast as possible don't need, and could be avoided by including that functionality with a few simple lines of code.
Maybe a simple illustration of what I mean might help.
Say I have a module which only does this
my $my_string = "my_print";
sub my_print {
print "$my_string: ", #_;
}
which would allow for a lot of small scripts to use my_print instead of print, with just a simple require with the filename of my module (and very little overhead).
Then, I wanted to use this in another module that has a package declaration, and this no longer works, so now I must use a package declaration and therefore Exporter in my simple module just to get this to work in the new module.
Having been using Perl for quite a while I am used the fact that almost everything is quite simple, straightforward, and low overhead, so I just feel that there could be such a solution for this. If not, then I would accept an answer that explains exactly why Exporter is the only way.

Answer 1

What Exporter does is quite simple. Here's how you can do it without using Exporter:
In Foo.pm:
package Foo;
use strict;
use warnings;
sub answer { 42 }
sub import {
no strict 'refs';
my $caller = caller;
*{$caller . "::answer"} = \&answer;
}
1;
In script.pl:
use Foo;
print answer(), "\n";
However, as others have said, you really needn't worry about the overhead of using Exporter. It's a fairly small and efficient module, and has been bundled with every version of Perl since 5.0. Whatsmore, chances are you're already loading it somewhere anyway -- many of the core Perl modules (such as Carp, Scalar::Util, List::Util, etc) use it.
Update: in an earlier version of the code above, I forgot the no strict 'refs';. This is necessary for *{$some_string} to work.

Answer 2

Exporter is definitely low overhead. There is also a list of alternative modules in the See Also section.
If you're curious, you can do a search on CPAN for the module and view the source yourself. You'll notice that the majority of the "code" is just documentation. However, honestly if you're this new to perl, you shouldn't be worrying about streamlining your code for being light weight as much as you should be aiming to take advantage of as many resources as possible to make coding quicker and easier.
Just my $.02

Answer 3

It sounds very much like you're trying to find an excuse to avoid Exporter? Have you really had programs that start up too slowly? Exporter is loaded and executed only in the compilation phase.
If you are genuinely worried about compilation speed then you should write
BEGIN { require MyPackage }
and then later
MyPackage::myprint($myparam)
which involves no overhead from Exporter at all, or even from the equivalent in-line code.
Yes, the code that actually exports symbols from one package to another is just a single line in the code of Exporter.pm and you could duplicate it. But wouldn't you much rather just add
use MyPackage;
at the start of you program and know that, from any context, the symbols from MyPackage would be correctly exported?
If you have "small simple scripts that must be run as fast as possible" then you should investigate leaving them running as daemons rather than recompiling the Perl each time the program is run.