In what way are variables declared with the vars pragma not package variables?

Sorry, you're right, the vars pragma does indeed make the variables part of the main package. What I meant to suggest is that making them part of an explicit package other than main makes code more readable.

it will also prevent you from accessing the keys of the %state_name_for hash, since in your last example it is a lexical scoped my variable not visible in config.pl.

Again, I wasn't clear that I was suggesting that the MyConfig package is declared in the config.pl file. %state_name_for is declared as lexically scoped precisely to avoid making it available from outside of the package. Instead, package users should use the state_name_for subroutine to access it. This will help coders avoid this pitfall: 

if( $MyConfig::state_name_for{AL} = 'Alaska' ){
   print  "oops! we just assigned Alaska to the AL key!\n";
}

[download]

In reply to Re^4: Variable declaration in 'required' file doesn't work under 'strict'? by agianni
in thread Variable declaration in 'required' file doesn't work under 'strict'? by punch_card_don

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.