$ splain /Users/ken/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.18.0t/bin/splain: Reading from STDIN Global symbol "$x" requires explicit package name Global symbol "$x" requires explicit package name (#1) (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"), declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable is in (using "::"). ^C