I did of course test my assertions before presenting them. Separating the "my" from the if makes the problem go away. If the array were lexically declared it would not persist between calls to the subroutine. What do you think is happening - C static declaration leaked in there? Hardly! All of your points are in fact incorrect. In addition your style of argument is unacceptable to more educated people. Perhaps if you were more careful in your analysis to improve your accuracy, you wouldn't need to use expletives and straw men (like creating a line of argument, implying dishojnestly that another said it and then shooting it down) to sell your fallacies. I don't like dishonest people - go away.