perlquestion Anonymous Monk <p>Hi. I'm a newbie Perl programmer (but a relatively experienced programmer in C) and I'm having trouble understanding the use of global variables in Perl. I would appreciate if people could help me.</p> <p>The problem that I'm having is actually very simple: how exactly do I define (rather than declare) a global variable in Perl? (I know that declaring the variable may be done with <code>use vars</code>.)</p> <p>I see that even under <code>use strict</code>, I don't have to declare/define global variables in Perl: I just need to fully qualify them and they're already there. Is this correct? If it is, then is there any kind of "super" <code>use strict</code>, which helps me catch typos that my programs may have?</p> <p>Also, is there any way of defining a variable like C's static (i.e., a global variable with local scope). I see that Perl's <code>our</code> is almost what I want, but the variable declared with <code>our</code> in a function is still accessible outside the function if I use the variable's fully qualified name. I fear that I don't completely understand <code>our</code>.</p> <p>In fact, I have trouble understanding the difference between <code>our ($i);</code> and <code>use vars qw($i);</code> Can anybody help with the difference? They don't seem different to the eyes of this poor Perl newbie.</p> <p>Thanks in advance for any comments.</p> 97