I have been told to always use strict and warnings but I dont.
Definitely do. You're just asking for nasty debugging problems if you don't .. in general, no reason not to--actually the opposite because it will save time by pointing out problems and potential problems to you. Try adding it to this program and see what pops..
Pre-declaring at the top.
Take a look at the thread coding rules, and in particular merlyn's reply Re: coding rules

In reply to Re^3: Query Subroutine by davidrw
in thread Query Subroutine by Fuism

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