Using strictures should force you to think about an appropriate place to declare variables and their lifetime. Knowing that globals are bad should force you to consider how variables are managed and should make it clear when there is a conflict in the way that variables are used. In other words, you would have solved the problem yourself or at least asked a different question if you had listened to our exhortations to use strictures and avoid globals.

Although you may not fully understand why we recommend that you use strictures and avoid globals, you should realise that we make those recommendations with good reason.

Here endith the lesson (we hope).

Nice to see a relevant answer. Though I'd point out that the variable isn't working like that because i'm not using strict, it's working that way because I didn't call the variable correctly - part of what I'm learning at the moment.

(Additional emphasis added by me.)

I personally believe that funnily enough, had you not the kind of attitude you're exhibiting all over this thread, perhaps you could realize that if you had used strict then it would have been impossible for you to call the variable incorrectly. (Up to a fatal error.) Thus you would have saved this thread and the people reading it a considerable amount of noise, thus reducing the noise/signal ratio, thus helping people to help you and increasing the chances of getting a prompt answer to your question.