Re: The power of strict typo-checking

[davido]

I think at first people see the use of lexical (my) variables as just a side effect to the practice of programming under strictures. And naturally the primary benefit to that side effect is seen as typo-protection. Certanly that is one of the useful features of programming under strictures.

But I have found that the more important effect (to me a primary effect) of programming with use strict is the fact that it ultimately encourages a certain style of programming; lexical scoping. Sure, you can use strict, and never really learn about lexical scoping. But honestly, I see lexical scoping as the primary reason to use lexical variables, and better error checking as one of the secondary reasons.

And of course there are other effects of the use of strictures. Using strict prevents the accidental use of symbolic references, it prevents the undeclared use of non-lexical variables, and it prevents barewords from being used for anything but subroutines (except on the lefthand side of => operators in some cases).

But I really see the primary advantage to using strictures the fact that it promotes the use of lexical variables, where I see lexical scoping as one of the more powerful underlying features of Perl.

[ihb]

... and lexical variables is what gave us closures in Perl. :-)

ihb