Perl Debugged

12.2. Tips for the C Programmer

You no longer must declare all your variables at the beginning of a block before any executable code. In fact, declaring them as late as possible is good practice because it keeps statements that belong to the same functional element together.

Perl's scalar variables are not strongly typed. They can switch oyster-like between integers, floating point numbers, and strings according to your whim (although if you ever turn a reference into a string, you can't turn it back). Even when you assign an object of a specific class to one, nothing stops you from overwriting it with an object of another class or something that isn't even an object at all. Polymorphism at its best. There is (as of version 5.005) the capability ...