In Clojure 1.4 what is the use of refer within require?

Question

What advantage does using :refer in :require have over using :only in :use? Are the following synonymous?

Answer 1

yes, they are equivalent,

:refer and :require are the basic operations required to build namespaces. :use is more convienient

• :require causes classes to be loaded
• :refer adds things to the name space which is really just a map (actually a couple of maps)
• :use is :refer + :require

as much is it may look like it, there really is no magic to namespaces

if you make a namespace like this

(ns so.example (:use my.lib))

the equivalent with :require would be:

(ns so.example (:require [my.lib :refer [function1 function2 function3 
                                         list every function in example 
                                         here and remember to keep it 
                                         up to date ]]))