How does the attached patch grab you?
--
David L Nicol
Aesop's fables, with text-sensitive advertising:
http://cronos.advenge.com/pc/aesop/start.html
--- perlfunc.pod.old 2005-07-15 15:08:38.125000000 -0500
+++ perlfunc.pod 2005-07-15 15:49:50.765625000 -0500
@@ -3198,19 +3198,21 @@
=item our TYPE EXPR : ATTRS
-An C<our> declares the listed variables to be valid globals within
-the enclosing block, file, or C<eval>. That is, it has the same
-scoping rules as a "my" declaration, but does not create a local
+Unlike C<my>, which both allocates storage for a variable and assigns
+a simple name to that storage for use within the current scope, C<our>
+associates a simple name with a package variable in the current package,
+for use within the current scope. In other words, C<our> has the same
+scoping rules as C<my>, but does not necessarily create a
variable. If more than one value is listed, the list must be placed
-in parentheses. The C<our> declaration has no semantic effect unless
-"use strict vars" is in effect, in which case it lets you use the
-declared global variable without qualifying it with a package name.
-(But only within the lexical scope of the C<our> declaration. In this
-it differs from "use vars", which is package scoped.)
-
-An C<our> declaration declares a global variable that will be visible
-across its entire lexical scope, even across package boundaries. The
-package in which the variable is entered is determined at the point
+in parentheses.
+
+When C<use strict vars> is in effect, C<our> lets you use
+declared global variables without qualifying them with package names,
+within the lexical scope of the C<our> declaration. In this
+way C<our> differs from C<use vars>, which is package scoped.
+
+The package in which a variable declared with C<our> lives
+is determined at the point
of the declaration, not at the point of use. This means the following
behavior holds:
@@ -3219,11 +3221,15 @@
$bar = 20;
package Bar;
- print $bar; # prints 20
+ print $bar; # prints 20, without looking up $bar in the symbol table
Multiple C<our> declarations in the same lexical scope are allowed
if they are in different packages. If they happened to be in the same
-package, Perl will emit warnings if you have asked for them.
+package, Perl will emit warnings if you have asked for them, just like
+multiple C<my> declarations on the same name in the same scope. Unlike
+a second C<my> declaration, which will assign the name in question to
+a fresh variable for the remainder of the scope, a second C<our> declaration
+in the same package, in the same scope, is merely redundant.
use warnings;
package Foo;
@@ -3234,7 +3240,7 @@
our $bar = 30; # declares $Bar::bar for rest of lexical scope
print $bar; # prints 30
- our $bar; # emits warning
+ our $bar; # emits warning but has no other effect
An C<our> declaration may also have a list of attributes associated
with it.
