Declaring variables in perl really does seem quite a mess, between use vars,my,our,local,strict on/off.

Whether strict is on or off doesn't matter for the type of variable. Strictness doesn't change the meaning - it just prevents you from doing certain things. Use the following table:

	Package var	Lexical var
Global scope	use vars	—
Lexical scope	our	my

local creates dynamically scoped values - it doesn't declare variables.

Abigail