Re (tilly) 2: using 'my'

[tilly]

Actually there are a number of truly global variables in Perl. For instance no matter what package you are in, $ENV, $^W, $_, etc are always the same.

[sierrathedog04]

You are correct. Camel III's glossary says:

In Perl, only certain special variables are truly global—most variables (and all subroutines) exist only in the current package.

[chip]

FWIW, those truly global variables are really all in the main package. The language parser acts as if those global variable names were prefixed with main:: if no package is specified, no matter what package directive is in scope at the time.

    -- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos

[tilly]

I know that. An amusing side-effect is that if someone mistakenly tries to throw an our on, say, $_ and they are in any package other than main::, it will not work as they expect.

This might be considered a bug.