Static variables have their uses. For example, one might generate a crc32 table on-demand. This has the advantages of: (1) not using globals, (2) not relying on BEGIN, (3) on-demand construction, (4) conciseness. It replaces the less expressive construct

{
  my $table;
  sub foo {
    $table //= init_tables(0x123);
    ...
  }
}
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There's nothing wrong with procedural programming.