in reply to Re^4: How to import "global" variables into sub-scripts from main script?
in thread How to import "global" variables into sub-scripts from main script?

I don't know a lot about mod_perl so I did not have that in mind. Parallelism can be an issue when modifying package vars in different threads (as with anything else). But as there are different ways to import a module (e.g. use, require but especially do (and eval) which asker uses a lot) and there are also ways to reload a module at runtime (e.g. Module::Refresh) I thought it's better to leave a questionmark there rather than being absolute. Given also that there are other safer ways to achieve read-write effect. Personally I can't stand things like: $DBI::errstr, whereas $XYZ::DEBUG = 1 is tolerable.

What's your opinion? Can we rely on the state of a package's variables modified after loaded (not in mod_perl, threads)?

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Re^6: How to import "global" variables into sub-scripts from main script?
by choroba (Cardinal) on Mar 23, 2021 at 19:43 UTC
    My opinion? Writable global variables are bad. Having a writer is much better as you can intercept it, which allows to debug it, wrap it, log it, etc. Global constants are basically OK, but it's still suspicious if a certain value is needed in several different places - maybe they should be moved closer together?

    The situation in mod_perl like environment is easy to demonstrate. But let's be more modern, it applies to plack as well, for example:

    #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Plack::Builder; our $global = 1; my $app = sub { my $env = shift; my $status = 200; my $headers = ['Content-type' => 'text/html']; return [$status, $headers, [$global++]] }; builder { mount '/' => $app; };

    Now run it as (sorry for *nix shell, but that's what I run)

    plackup -s Starman --workers 2 11130232.pl

    Now run several requests in parallel, e.g.

    for i in {1..100} ; do curl http://localhost:5000 & done

    and check what the global state is several times:

    $ curl [HTTP://localhost:5000] 55 $ curl [HTTP://localhost:5000] 47

    Each worker keeps its own state, but you never know which one you'll hit.

    map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]