Question

Compare using perl -w -Mstrict:

# case Alpha
print $c;

…

# case Bravo
if (0) {
  my $c = 1;
}

print $c;

…

# case Charlie
my $c = 1 if 0;
print $c;

Alpha and Bravo both complain about the global symbol not having an explicit package name, which is to be expected. But Charlie does not give the same warning, only that the value is uninitialized, which smells a lot like:

# case Delta
my $c;
print $c;

What exactly is going on under the hood? (Even though something like this should never be written for production code)

Answer 1

You can think of a my declaration as having an action at compile-time and at run-time. At compile-time, a my declaration tells the compiler to make a note that a symbol exists and will be available until the end of the current lexical scope. An assignment or other use of the symbol in that declaration will take place at run-time.

So your example

my $c = 1 if 0;

is like

my $c;         # compile-time declaration, initialized to undef
$c = 1 if 0;   # runtime -- as written has no effect

---

Note that this compile-time/run-time distinction allows you to write code like this.

my $DEBUG;    # lexical scope variable declared at compile-time
BEGIN {
    $DEBUG = $ENV{MY_DEBUG};   # statement executed at compile-time
};

Now can you guess what the output of this program is?

my $c = 3;
BEGIN {
    print "\$c is $c\n";
    $c = 4;
}
print "\$c is $c\n";