declare/initialize variables at bottom of script?

[bcarroll]

I always use strict, and usually declare/initialize variables at the top of a script.

use warnings;
use strict;

my ($str1, $str2, $str3);
my @arr = ('1', '2', '3');

... do stuff with the variables ...

Does perl have any magical tricks to put the variable declaration/initialization in a subroutine or some other mechanism so that is not the top chunk of the script?
something like this (which does not work)

use warnings;
use strict;
initializeVars();
... do stuff with the variables ...
sub initializeVars{
    our ($str1, $str2, $str3);
    our @arr = ('1', '2', '3');
}

[BrowserUk]

usually declare/initialize variables at the top of a script.

I much prefer to declare (and if required; initialise) variables at their point of first use. I can see no advantage of your practice?

[AnomalousMonk]

If you want to go old-school, there's also the vars pragma for declaring package variables (which is what you get with our):
    use vars qw($scalar @array %hash $etc);


But I must say I second BrowserUk's preferred practice and would echo his question: what advantage do you see for doing it your way?

[5mi11er]

Well, you could wrap all your code in subroutines at the top, then do the initializations and call some "main()" routine at the bottom, kinda like C code...

Otherwise, I am unaware of any magic options.

-Scott

[bcarroll]

I think I used to do that years ago... not sure why I stopped...

Thanks!

[Laurent_R]

I ... usually declare/initialize variables at the top of a script.

Don't do that. It is a bad idea.

I was also doing that at my beginning in Perl, because of my C background (I think it has changed in C, but there was a time where all variables had to be declared either at the beginning of each function, or at the beginning of the program for global variables.

Declaring all your variables at the beginning of the program defeats at least a good half of the advantages of lexical variables. It makes your variable essentially global, which is precisely what you don't want to do. You should rather declare your variables in the smallest possible lexical scope (function level, loop level, block level, whatever).

[Preceptor]

Initializing you could do somewhere else, but declaration must happen before you attempt to use them. Either via 'my' declaration at the top of your script, or you could perhaps import them from a module. In neither case can you declare variables at the 'bottom' but you could do so at the top of a short module as a separate piece of code.

[dcmertens]

If you're willing to foregoe strictness (not recommended), you could use globals and a BEGIN block:

no strict;
no warnings;
some_operation_on($abc);

...

BEGIN {
    $abc = 'foo';
}

If you want to keep strictness, you have to declare them before their first use. Again, you could employ the BEGIN bock trick to assign their initial values at the end of the script.