I don't like to declare the same variable more than once.

sub read_cache {
  our %CACHE;
  ...
}

sub write_cache {
  our %CACHF;
  ...
}
[download]

Oops. It's so easy to slip... But on the other hand, you have to misspell the variable throughout all of &write_cache, which usually isn't too probable. But for short routines--like get/set routines--it's a not too far-fetched scenario.

For those times I prefer to use

{
  our %CACHE;

  sub read_cache {
    ...
  }

  sub write_cache {
    ...
  }
}
[download]

The only reason I want more education is that I learned about lexical and package variables as totally separate!!! and now they ain't... Which is cool, but also pretty bizarre.

I agree, it does indeed look like globals has become... something else. But you can relax--they haven't. They're still totally separate. What our() does is to declare a lexical alias for the global variable.

Cheers,
-Anomo