The initialisation of the variables happens at runtime (execution of the block), while the setting up of the subroutines happens at compile-time.

That explains my confusion as to why Perl doesn't complain about the functions but can't find the variables. Thanks!

The reason I'm not calling new is that I would like to encapsulate a regex (and relevant condition) inside the object which should work without actually creating an instance. I just want to store that regex in the object for cleanliness, apart from any actual OO code.