Perl Cookbook

Making Variables Private to a Function

Problem

Your subroutine needs temporary variables. You shouldn’t use global variables, because another subroutine might also use the same variables.

Solution

Use my to declare a variable private to a region of your program:

sub somefunc {
    my $variable;                 # $variable is invisible outside somefunc()
    my ($another, @an_array, %a_hash);     # declaring many variables at once

    # ...
}

Discussion

The my operator confines a variable to a particular region of code in which it can be used and accessed. Outside that region, it can’t be accessed. This region is called its scope.

Variables declared with my have lexical scope , which means that they exist only within a particular textual area of code. For instance, the scope of $variable in the Solution is the function it was defined in, somefunc. When a call to somefunc is made, the variable is created. The variable is destroyed when the function call ends. The variable can be accessed within the function, but not outside of it.

A lexical scope is usually a block of code with a set of braces around it, such as those defining the body of the somefunc subroutine or those marking the code blocks of if, while, for, foreach, and eval statements. Lexical scopes may also be an entire file or strings given to eval. Since a lexical scope is usually a block, we’ll sometimes talk about lexical variables (variables with lexical scope) being only visible in their block when we mean that they’re only visible in their scope. Forgive ...