As the anonymous but wise monk pointed out above, this is a case of the `my $x if 0' feature. For some reading material on this, start here and look through some of the p5p threads on it.

I doubt this feature will go anywhere for Perl 5 at least, because it doesn't seem to cause any problems and allows you to do something (create a static variable) which you can't really do any other way.

But it does mean you should be careful when declaring lexicals.

-dlc

In reply to RE: lexical weirdness(?) by dchetlin
in thread lexical weirdness(?) by jimt

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