Re: How does my work with a trailing conditional

ikegami is correct in that the syntax under question is documented as having undefined behavior.

That said, the way it generally behaves is:

my has both compile-time and run-time behaviors. The compile-time behavior allocates the space for $string. The run-time behavior will assign the value on the RHS of the operator to $string.
STATMENT if COND will perform the run-time portions of STATEMENT if COND evaluates to true ... at RUNTIME.

Generally, this trick is used to declare and initialize static variables within functions. Your second try is much better and cleaner, anyways.

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Re^2: How does my work with a trailing conditional by dave_the_m (Monsignor) on Apr 21, 2005 at 19:03 UTC
The run-time behavior will assign the value on the RHS of the operator to $string. The important run-time behaviour of `my` is to make a note to release the scalar on scope exit. Thus `my $foo if $false` means that the var isn't released at the end of the block, making the value still available at the next entry to the block. Dave.	[reply] [d/l] [select]