how about a closure where you want to use a var declared outside of the closure

Well, by definition, a closure does operate on variables outside itself... that's the whole point.

As for a closure that is based on a global variable (lexical or otherwise), I can only ask "Why would you want to do a thing like that?" If the variable is global, it sort of defeats the purpose of wrapping it up in a closure. (Otherwise you would just use local).

So yes, you could do so, but I don't think it qualifies as a Real World Example™ as per the OP. I think anything you could come up with could be wrapped up in a sub and use lexical mys, and I think it would be better that way.

sub whatever_its_called {
    our ($dbh) = DBI->connect(...);
    sub do_hit {
        $dbh->prepare("stuff");
    }
}
[download]

I don't use our, so I'm not sure if there's some subtlety going on here that I am missing. With that in mind, I fail to see how your sub differs from:

sub whatever_its_called {
    my ($dbh) = DBI->connect(...);
    sub do_hit {
        $dbh->prepare("stuff");
    }
}
[download]

Look ma! no our! That's the whole point.

- another intruder with the mooring of the heat of the Perl

But surely my would be more appropriate here - $dbh is still a global variable, it is only the effect of our that is lexical.

/J\