Question

This seems really simple but it is giving me a hard time figuring it out as I’m new to perl.. I’ve been looking through a lot of documentation now about loops and I am still stumped by this… I have a sub that contains a while loop and I want to use a variable value from within the loop outside of the loop (after the loop has run), however when I try to print out the variable, or return it out of the sub, it doesn’t work, only when I print the variable from within the loop does it work.. I would appreciate any advice as to what I’m doing wrong.

Doesn’t work (doesn’t print $test ):

sub testthis {    
    $i = 1;
    while ($i <= 2) {    
        my $test = 'its working' ;    
        $i++ ;
    }
    print $test ;
}

&testthis ;

Works, prints $test:

sub testthis {
    $i = 1;
    while ($i <= 2) {
        my $test = 'its working' ;
        $i++ ;
        print $test ;
    }
}

&testthis ;

Answer 1

You declare variable test inside the loop, so it scope is the loop, as soon as you leave the loop the variable is not longer declared.
Add my $test; just between $i=1 and while(..) and it will work. The scope will now be the entire sub instead of only the loop