Global symbol "$c" requires explicit package name at test.pl line 8. Execution of test.pl aborted due to compilation errors (#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 "::"). BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at /usr/lib64/perl5/5.12.2/Carp.pm line 113.