I second moritz. You've created a persistent state variable -- a static variable in your terms -- a variable local to the class, not to the instance. Therefore, it's not reset on object creation, which is exactly what you want if you want a persistent state.

You probably don't want that, if you want it to be reset for each object; you just want an ordinary attribute -- a variable local to the instance. The traditional choice is to declare the object in the constructor as a reference to a blessed hash and store your data within the hash. There are other ways to do it, of course.

Um, by the way, if you do decide to create a persistent state variable, you might want to enclose the entire class in braces, rather than only one method:

THIS: 

package Foo;

{

    my $state = 0;     # better initialize it

    sub new    {...};

    sub fiddle {...};

    sub faddle {...};

    sub fuddle {...};

}

__END__


NOT THAT:

package Foo;

sub new    {...};

sub fiddle {...};

{

    my $state = 0;     # better initialize it


    sub faddle {...};

}

sub fuddle {...};

__END__
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If you do THIS, then when you $bar = Foo::new(); and later $bar->fiddle() or $bar->fuddle() it, you will still have access within those methods to $state. If you don't, and do THAT (as you described), then you will have created a state variable peculiar to the method faddle(), invisible even to other methods of the same class. Are you sure y/N?