Moin André, Am 26.04.2010 um 21:44 schrieb André Warnier: > cr...@animalhead.com wrote: >> The retention of values from previous executions applies >> only to global variables. > > Ah, yes. > But that would have triggered another discussion (which it might now > still do of course), about what exactly /is/ a global variable, in the > context of a mod_perl handler or perl script run under modperl::Registry.
Let's first clarify it for Perl in general, and then for mod_perl. A global variable in Perl is any variable not declared with "my". Which includes variables declared with "our" or "use vars" (I'll get to these), and also variables created by full qualification, as in "$Bla::Blub = 1". A lexical variable in Perl is any variable declared with "my", regardless of the scope, which may be file-level. Unlike globals, lexical variables aren't directly accessible from outside the package. A global variable declared (or introduced, or admitted) with "use vars" is in scope for the entire package where it is declared. A global variable declared with "our" is in scope only for the lexical scope where it is declared (see "perldoc -f our"). (There's also "local", a misnomer, to temporarily stash away the current value of a global variable and shadow it with another value. We can leave it out of the picture here.) Now, how is this different for mod_perl? Well, it isn't, if you think about it, or rather it boils down to the difference between a mod_perl handler and your typical batch script. Your batch script is invoked, it runs, and ends. Running it probably includes some initialization code of yours placed at the file level. Next time around, the whole thing start anew. Nothing special here. A mod_perl handler, as you know, is loaded once, and unless it is reloaded, is only acted upon by invocation of its functions, such as handler(). Which means that reinitialization doesn't happen automatically, as with your batch script running in a new process each time. So what does this mean for file level lexical variables (my-variables) you have defined? Well, they don't get reinitialized (unless you provide code to do so), so they start behaving like global variables, retaining state between invocations. They are not, however, accessible from outside the current package, so they're still lexical variables. There's one more thing to understand, especially in the context of Apache::Registry and Apache2::Registry, and that's lexical "my" variables referenced from nested names subroutines. You do not usually create nested named subroutines, but the Registry handler does it for you by wrapping your registry script in a handler subroutine in a package made up from the filesystem path of rour registry script. So if you define a registry script with a subroutine that references a lexical variable from the enclosing scope, you'll see the familiar warning message "Variable "$x" will not stay shared". You can read up about this issue here: http://perl.apache.org/docs/general/perl_reference/perl_reference.html Hope this helps :-) -- Michael.Ludwig (#) XING.com
