Am I depending on a quirk, which might go away in a future version of perl? In particular, will this method work in a linux context also?

Your are using a Perl version that hasn't been updated or supported in 10 years. Many of us here are willing to discuss the general strategies of using global variables, modules, object orientation and so on. But when it comes to bugs and quirks in your ancient version of Perl (on an operating system that's nearly end-of-life), you are pretty much on your own.

Personally, i refuse to support Perl versions or operating system that are end-of-life and don't receive security updates (with the explicit exceptions of Retro-Computing, historical exibits and emulators). I mean, who knows in this day and age. If i help you keep an insecure system running, i might be legally liable and your companies lawyers might come after me in the worst case if there's a data breach through a known security problem in your system. If you upgrade and you run into compatibility problems, that is another matter entirely. I'm pretty sure many of us here would be more than happy to help with specific problems, if you ask a proper, specific question: How do I post a question effectively?

PerlMonks XP is useless? Not anymore: XPD - Do more with your PerlMonks XP

In reply to Re: Common subs and Global Variables by cavac
in thread Common subs and Global Variables by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.