I prefer to never initialize a variable as empty. Why? It is the best way to find out if you are actually using the variable in your code. Quick sample,

use warnings;
my $retval = 0;

warn "Return Value $retval\n";

[download]

You have not done anything with this value, and nothing gets reported as being a problem. If you do this,

use warnings;
my $retval;

warn "Return Value $retval\n";

[download]

You are going to get an uninitialized value warning, you will probably be saying WTF? Until you look and realize the code that you wanted was this,

use warnings;
my $retval;

$retval = get_value_from_subroutine();

warn "Return Value $retval\n";

[download]

It also reduces the amount of code that you have, I admit it is small, but do it a couple of hundred times, you get the idea.

In reply to Re: Use of uninitialized variables? by Herkum
in thread Use of uninitialized variables? by Zadeh

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.