From: Gunnar Hjalmarsson <nore...@gunnar.cc> > Jenda Krynicky wrote: > > From: "Chas. Owens" <chas.ow...@gmail.com> > >> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 13:38, Gunnar Hjalmarsson <nore...@gunnar.cc> > >> wrote: > >> snip > >>>> Fully qualified names do not trip strict. Which is a reason to avoid > >>>> using them. I once work at a place that wrote Perl 5 as if it were > >>>> still Perl 4. They had turned on strict because they had heard it was > >>>> the right thing to do, but their response to it failing their scripts > >>>> was to move to using only fully qualified variables. > >>> A few years ago I made that same mistake in a rather large Perl program, > >>> and > >>> I believe that my mistake was caused by the fact that that was just what > >>> Perl requested me to do. > >>> > >>> $ perl -Mstrict -e'$var=""' > >>> Global symbol "$var" requires explicit package name at -e line 1. > >>> Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors. > > > Well, the first thing the message says is that the "$var" is a global > > symbol. That's the first thing you should be thinking about. Do I > > want the variable to be global? OK, if I wanted it to be global I > > would add the explicit package, but I do not want it to be global. > > What do I do? > > That's easy to say when you know the difference. At the time I did not. > I just wanted to turn on strict in order to prepare the program for > mod_perl. > > The message wording may well mislead beginners IMNSHO. At least those > who are not 'smarter' than me. ;-)
It's hard to tell now, but I believe I knew the difference between a global and local variable (in the normal meaning of the word) at latest when playing with Pascal back when I was about 15. But maybe I was never confused by this message because I first looked for a way to declare local variables and quite a bit later introduced use strict. As a way to help find typos and accidental globals. So to me this message always meant "hey, either you've mistyped or you never declared the variable". I think the original problem is with using use strict because 1. someone told you to or 2. you were told you have to do so for mod_perl. It's not really "use strict" that's required by mod_perl. In either case what wording would you suggest? Maybe '$var' not declared, requires explicit package name if global ? Though I bet people will be confused in cases like perl -Mstrict -e 'local $var = 4' because quite a few people think "local $foo" is a declaration. Jenda ===== je...@krynicky.cz === http://Jenda.Krynicky.cz ===== When it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like. -- Terry Pratchett in Sourcery -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
