my $var at file scope and __DATA__ sections under mod_perl

[Rob Mueller (fastmail)]

I've had a little bit of a look, but can't find anything in the mod_perl guide about this. Basically it seems to me that 'my' variables at the package level don't retain their value under mod_perl.   For instance, consider the following mod_perl handler.   package My::Module; my $var;   sub handler {     warn($var || 'blah');     $var = 'test'; }   Each time, the warn is for 'blah' because the value 'test' is never retained in $var. Is this intended behaviour? Personally I don't actually do this myself, but the module MIME::Types does, and it's causing it to break badly.   Actually, it's a bit deeper than that. MIME::Types does this:   my %list; sub new(@) { (bless {}, shift)->init( {@_} ) }   sub init($) {   my ($self, $args) = @_;     unless(keys %list)     {   local $_;         while(<MIME::Types::DATA>)         {   s/\#.*//;             next if m/^$/; ...   What I'm finding is that it ends up running the loop everytime because (keys %list) == 0 always. Now in theory this should work, it would just be a performance annoyance. But it doesn't, if I change the code to       {   local $_;         while(<MIME::Types::DATA>)         {   s/\#.*//;             warn($_);             next if m/^$/; ...   I end up seeing in my logs...   [Mon Jan 14 13:47:01 2002] null: type: application/index.response [Mon Jan 14 13:47:01 2002] null: type: application/index.vnd [Mon Jan 14 13:47:01 2002] null: type: application/iotp [Mon Jan 14 13:47:01 2002] null: type: application/ipp [Mon Jan 14 13:47:01 2002] null: type: applicati at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/MIME/Types.pm line 75, <DATA> line 30.   Weird, it's like the <MIME::Types::DATA> handle just mysteriously ran out of data halfway through reading from it. Does anybody have any idea what's going on here. What's the best idea for fixing a module like this, change all:   my $var;   to   usr vars qw($var);   and submit a patch?   Rob