I'm definitely not the right person to respond (I'm not a native speaker either), but I understand the difference like this: clutter means putting one's garbage to somewhere it doesn't belong and thus making it hard to find the real stuff (like writing temporary files into the same directory as the data files and forgeting to delete them). On the other hand to clobber is to overwrite someone elses data.

So in the first case the data are still there, but are hard(er) to find, while in the second they are gone.

Getting back to Perl ... if you export all your symbols to the main namespace you are cluttering it and if you overwrite someone elses variable you are clobbering.

Jenda
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
   -- Rick Osborne

Edit by castaway: Closed small tag in signature