Re: To initialise or not to initialise?

[bradcathey]

kiat, another good question, one that I have thought about often. Here's where I'm at now. I no longer initialize with a value, unless that value is to be used immediately and/or it helps me read what I'm doing:

my $ctr = 0;
for ( 0 .. 5 ) {
   if ($foo[$_] eq $bar) {
      $ctr++;
   }
}

I have found there is a difference between:

my $variable;

and

my $variable = "";

or

my $variable = 0;

depending on usage. In summary, I don't think there can be a hard a fast rule. Like many things, it depends on context and the readibility you need.