Re^2: my and scope

Hi Rolf,

Thanks, that helps. I re-read Chapter 8 of the Camel book after my code worked, and I came across the following on page 243:

Suppose, for example, that you create a hard reference to a lexically scoped array named @array. This hard reference, and the referent it refers to, will continue to exist even after @array goes out of scope. A referent is only destroyed when all the references to it are eliminated.

So everyone else thinks it's good style?

I appreciate all the quick responses.

Chris

Comment on Re^2: my and scope

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Re^3: my and scope by davido (Cardinal) on Mar 28, 2013 at 22:06 UTC
Being able to return a reference safely is fundamental to Perl, and doesn't raise any style-police eyebrows. Consider DBI, where database rows are fetched as an array-ref or hash-ref. Consider JSON, where the thawed JSON data is returned as a reference to a Perl data structure. Since you have a C++ background, you might appreciate that Perl references are somewhat analogous to C++11's `std::shared_ptr`; usually safe to return, because they are referenced counted, and safe to let fall out of scope, because the reference counting also handles destruction. Dave	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: my and scope by LanX (Saint) on Mar 28, 2013 at 22:14 UTC
> So everyone else thinks it's good style? This is pluralistic Perl and not a "benevolent dictatorship"! (You will always find someone arguing, because of "side effects" or whatever. ;-) But honestly as Davido explained, it's fundamental, if you skip these feature it's not Perl anymore. Cheers Rolf ( addicted to the Perl Programming Language)	[reply]
Re^4: my and scope by davido (Cardinal) on Mar 28, 2013 at 22:43 UTC
Indeed, it is fundamental. Were it not for returning references safely, we wouldn't have closures, and we wouldn't have blessed reference based objects. Dave	[reply]