There's an implied "that you can use" modifying phrase there that you're not using.

When you use "our" to declare a global variable under strictures, you are getting a "new variable out of it" that you can use. Without the "our" declaration (or the old "use vars" declaration), you cannot use the variable - the program does not run because of this. With the "our" declaration, you now can use the variable - it's syntactically as if it were a new variable. Which it mostly is - it's a new entry in the symbol table.

The fact that, under the covers, all that "our" does is set up a value in a global symbol table such that strict doesn't complain, is really not that important. That's just an implementation detail. The syntactical sugar of "our" is a huge level of abstraction that allows people to think they're getting a new variable, and, under strictures, not be too far off the real effect.

(++ for the uglier way to do it. Ewww! :-})

In reply to Re^2: Ugly ways to declare global variables? by Tanktalus
in thread Ugly ways to declare global variables? by wolfger

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