hey you name them, they are not anonymous! ; )

Not when its compiled, and that makes a difference.

>perl -c -we"sub outer { my $x; sub inner { $x } inner() }"
Variable "$x" will not stay shared at -e line 1.
-e syntax OK

>perl -c -we"sub outer { my $x; local *inner = sub { $x }; inner() }"
-e syntax OK
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And yeah, it's effectively a named sub thereafter. That's a bonus.

I'd rather prefer this construction

I usually use inner subs for recursive functions, and my would cause a memory leak there. It also needlessly complicates the calling syntax.

sub outer {
  ...
  my $helper;
  $helper = sub {      # $helper references helper sub
     ...
     $helper->();      # helper sub references $helper
     ...
  };
  ...
}
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Cyclic reference ⇒ memory leak.

Recursions with inner subs are a very special case! I agree this should be handeld with care, unfortunately reference counting is not the best garbage collection technique...

but using the global namespace for an inner function is somehow dangerous. What if you call an external function within outer, that tries to call a completely different function also called inner()?

Maybe you should better use package to choose another namespace within outer() in combination with this local *name strategie to prevent this trap!

Cheers Rolf

UPDATE: Well OK, at least you get a warning ...

$\="\n";
sub inner { print "global_inner" }
inner();

sub whatever { inner() }


sub outer {
 local *inner=sub {print "inner_of_outer"};
 inner();
 whatever();
}

outer();
__END__
Subroutine main::inner redefined at c:\perl\push.pm line 9.
global_inner
inner_of_outer
inner_of_outer
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but using the global namespace for an inner function is somehow dangerous. What if you call an external function within outer, that tries to call a completely different function also called inner()?

First, there's no such thing as the global namespace. The code uses the current namespace.

Secondly, are you seriously complaining that a script can't have two functions with the same name? Or did you mean to test something like

use strict;
use warnings;

$\ = "\n";

sub outer2 {
   local *inner = sub { print "inner_of_outer2" };
   inner();
}

sub outer1 {
   local *inner = sub { print "inner_of_outer1" };
   inner();
   outer2();
}

outer1();
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Unfortunately, that gives a warning.

inner_of_outer1
Subroutine main::inner redefined at script.pl line 7.
inner_of_outer2
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