I'd put the encoding-work in a subroutine and give no further thought to initializing and tearing-down the variable. Unless you are truly doing this millions of times such that you can clearly demonstrate that there's a problem to be solved here, you have no problem. The code should be clear and well tested and easily changed, with low chances of compromising some other part of the system by doing so. This to me is an argument against "globals."

In reply to Re: Best Practice for replace sub by Anonymous Monk
in thread Best Practice for replace sub by Skeeve

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