note broquaint <blockquote><i> From this description and the examples it might not be clear that $foo is in scope from its declaration to the end of the enclosing block or file </i></blockquote> Good point, but I do mention file-scoped lexicals later on in the tutorial and I don't like forward-referencing in learning material. Will see if I can clear it up somehow though. <blockquote><i> I think that the point [Elian] makes about destruction is still valid. The lifetime of an item is a separate issue to its scope (lexical or otherwise). </i></blockquote> This is true, but I didn't think it was necessary to go into the details of reference counting for something as simple as a lexical scoping tutorial. I was trying to keep it as straight forward as possible and adding memory management into the fray would almost certainly confuse the reader. Perhaps I should put a reference to [Matts]' [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2002/08/07/proxyobject.html|Proxy Objects article] as further reading. <blockquote><i> Another way you can demonstrate this nicely is with a BEGIN block. </i></blockquote> Marvellous! That illustrates the compile time vs runtime concept beautifully. <blockquote><i> Not entirely sure that this is quite clear enough - especially the phrase "length of a given lexical scope". </i></blockquote> I do labour the meaning of the 'length' of a lexical scope shortly after, and I can't think of another way of clearing stating how a dynamic scope is defined (perhaps a more judicious use of commenting the code would do the trick) so it'll have to do for now :) <blockquote><i> Might be worth mentioning the historical context </i></blockquote> Indeed, think I'll stick a line in there to elaborate on why <tt>[perlfunc:local|local]</tt> has such an ambiguous definition. <blockquote><i> This is, of course, equally true of dynamic scoped variables </i></blockquote> True, but I didn't want to mention the fact that localised dynamic variables are in fact *new* variables because I reckon it would add yet another layer of complexity that the tutorial could do without. <p/> Thanks again for the input, it is most insightful indeed! I think the whole tutorial will need get another revision and then posted to [Tutorials]. <br/> HTH <p/> <tt>_________<br><u>broquaint</u></tt> 213855 215546