Hi.

When you type local variable name, the var is actually global. It can be seen by any part of your script. If you type my varname, the varname is private. It can only be seen by that 'namespace'. Example:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict; 

my $name;
print "Enter your name: ";
chomp( $name = <STDIN> );
print "Hi $name\n";

&Greeting;


sub Greeting
{
 my $name;
 print "Hi $name!";
}

[download]

The Greeting subroutine has it's own scalar variable called $name. Whatever it contains has nothing to do with the outside 'world'. Using local is a little more complex than that, but hopefully this will help. A great explanation can be found in Learning Perl 3rd edition by O'Reilly publishing.

-DK

In reply to Re: What is the difference between 'local' and 'my'? by DigitalKitty
in thread What is the difference between 'local' and 'my'? 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.