Perl Cookbook

Making Variables Private to a Module

Problem

You want to make a variable or function private to a package.

Solution

You can’t. But you can make them private to the file that the module sits in, which usually suffices.

Discussion

Remember that a package is just a way of grouping variables and functions together, conferring no privacy. Anything in a package is by definition global and accessible from anywhere. Packages only group; they don’t hide.

For privacy, only lexical variables will do. A module is implemented in a Module.pm, with all its globals in the package named Module. Because that whole file is by definition a scope and lexicals are private to a scope, creating file-scoped lexicals is effectively the same thing as a module-private variable.

If you alternate packages within a scope, though, you may be surprised that the scope’s lexicals are visible no matter where you are. That’s because a package statement only sets a different prefix for a global identifier.

package Alpha;
my $aa = 10;
   $x = "azure";

package Beta;
my $bb = 20;
   $x = "blue";

package main;
print "$aa, $bb, $x, $Alpha::x, $Beta::x\n";

                  10, 20, , azure, blue

Was that the output you expected? The two lexicals, $aa and $bb, are still in scope because we haven’t left the current block, file, or eval. You might think of globals and lexicals as existing in separate dimensions, forever unrelated to each other. Package statements have nothing to do with lexicals. By setting the current prefix, the first global variable ...