Questions about curious idiom seen in package

SimonSaysCake has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

We use a package where I work, "WebService::NetSuite", and I happened to be looking at the code recently and noticed a very odd idiom being used:

undef my $hash_ref;

It's seems pretty clear that is't not a typo (unless it's the result of a bad cross-file seach-and-replace) as it is used in 16 different places across two files within that package. Noteworthy is that it is only used when initializing but not also assigning new variables (in those cases the author just issues EG:

my $super_epoch = time() * 1000;

which is what you'd expect).

I scanned all other packages in my Strawberry install and found no other packages where this is used.

My questions are, does this leading "undef" really do anything? If so, what exactly?

Thanks to anyone that can shed light/offer insight.

-s1m0n-

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Re: Questions about curious idiom seen in package by tobyink (Canon) on Feb 18, 2019 at 00:27 UTC
`undef($variable)` sets a variable to undef. `undef(my $variable)` declares a variable and sets it to undef in the same statement. However, scalar variables default to undef anyway so there's no point in it. toby döt ink	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Questions about curious idiom seen in package by ikegami (Patriarch) on Feb 18, 2019 at 01:08 UTC
More precisely, `$var = undef;` sets a var to undef. `undef $var;` also frees any buffers associated with the variable. This will usually result in a performance penalty.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Questions about curious idiom seen in package by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Feb 18, 2019 at 00:35 UTC
... does this leading "undef" really do anything? It does nothing. It is a compulsive programming tick akin to `my $scalar = undef;` `my @array = ();` `my %hash = ();` In the latter two cases, I can barely see some occasional justification for the practice because it may relieve the onerous burden of having to write a comment like `my @ra; # this array will remain empty until something is put into it` Otherwise... Give a man a fish: `<%-{-{-{-<`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Questions about curious idiom seen in package by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on Feb 18, 2019 at 15:35 UTC
“It does nothing”. Probably the best behavior for “something” (or how ever you may call it) in Perl. May be this is the best thread so far in this year. It made my day. Best regards, Karl «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe» `perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'`Help	[reply] [d/l]


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