This is really, really bizarre. I'm using 5.8.1-RC3 in MacOS X 10.3. Here is what I've found:-

If I comment out the lines of test2, then change local $aa =... to local $b = I get no errors. If I change the '$a' assignment to something with 2 letters then I get another error due to that line. I seems as though perl only generates the global symbol error for variables with more than one letter in their name. Very strange.

The obvious way to fix the problem is to do what the error messages are asking for - give a global package name by putting $main::aa

This is not a very good idea though. In general you would be better to pass parameters into the function, and use return values from a function to achieve what you want. Only use global variables as an absolute last resort. (I've never used the 'local' decleration by the way!)

use strict;
test1();

sub test1 {
    test2(1,2);
}

sub test2 {
    my ($a, $aa) = @_;
    print "a = $a\n";
    print "aa = $aa\n";
}

[download]

In reply to Re: Local Scope Variables by hhdave
in thread Local Scope 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.