Fellow monasterians,

This is something very elementary that bugs me everytime I code it, and thought I should nip it here an now. I guess it's more about verbose-looking code than anything and wondering if this is just how things are in Perldom. Here goes:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
my $foo = 1;

if ($foo) {
   my $bar = "true";
}
print $bar;

[download]

Of course, this bit of code results in a strict error, so declare $bar ahead of the conditional...

my $bar;
if ($foo) {
   $bar = "true";
}
print $bar;

[download]

But now I have a global. So I add braces to reign it in...

{
my $bar;
if ($foo) {
   $bar = "true";
}
print $bar;
}

[download]

Which is usually how I code it, but it seems "ugly." Yes, I know that is one of the features of Perl, and this might all sound like whining, but is there a better way? I guess what I'm thinking should be possible is:

if ($foo) {
   my $bar = "true";
}
print $bar;

[download]

Thanks. I feel better having finally asked this.


—Brad
"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up. " G. K. Chesterton

In reply to A cleaner way of scoping variables by bradcathey

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