note
dchetlin
As the anonymous but wise monk pointed out above, this is a case of the `my $x if 0' feature.
For some reading material on this, start <a href="http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/05/p5pdigest/THISWEEK-20000521.html#my_x_if_0;_Trick">here</a> and look through some of the p5p threads on it.
<p>I doubt this feature will go anywhere for Perl 5 at least,
because it doesn't seem to cause any problems and allows you to
do something (create a static variable) which you can't really
do any other way.
<p>But it does mean you should be careful when declaring lexicals.
<p>-dlc
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