Perl does not have lexical subs. Nor does it have lexical filehandles, dirhandles, typeglobs or formats. The reason is probably historical: C doesn't have lexical functions either.

Lexical subs have been on the wish list for some time though, but it never has had a high priority. I don't see much use of lexical functions; you can't easily pass them around, you would need a reference to them before you can, and then one could start off with a coderef in the first place.

Abigail