I didn't know about "our" (and still don't, but at least now I know what I should be looking for)

Nooo!!! You should not be looking at our! Lexical variables (my) are what you should be learning about first and they should be preferred to global variables (our) in almost all cases.

Given you are a Perl beginner, you need to master the basics of scoping and how to write subroutines. Start by defining all your subroutines at the top of the file and pass parameters to each subroutine. Do not succumb to the evil of having subroutines use global variables. Instead think about your code, what each subroutine does and what it needs, and pass parameters to each subroutine for use as local variables within the subroutine. For example:

use strict;
use warnings;

sub my_print
{
    my $i = shift;
    print $i;
}

foreach my $j (0, 1) {
    my_print($j);
}
[download]

Further reading from the Perl monks Tutorials section:

• Lexical scoping like a fox by broquaint
• 'our' is not 'my' by Ovid who concludes with "Interesting to note that the only uses I've found for our have been hacking bad code"

As for learning Perl, take a look at learn.perl.org and Perl Tutorial Hub. Also, be sure to refer to the Perl online documentation. Good luck!

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