Really? But you dont list any.

The "unintended global" problem is often a feature, not a bug: yes, I do use global variables (judiciously, and deliberately, and with full knowledge of what I'm doing) and when I do I declare them... at the top of my program.

Then how can you call them "unintended globals"? The point I was making is that a programmer might think that by making lexical declarations in file scoped main that those lexicals are private to the main code. But they _arent_. Whereas what you are talking about is a proper global variable declaration which belongs (if they must be used) as you say at the top. BTW the code snippet you posted has a misnomer

use statements

my $foo; # LOOK I'M A PACKAGE GLOBAL WOO HOO! (wrong)
# NO ITS NOT  ITS A FILE SCOPED LEXICAL 
# PRETENDING TO BE A PACKAGE GLOBAL

main loop/program logic

subs
[download]

On face value I agree with you. Properly written it shouldn't matter. But the issue here is best practice. And best practice should be oriented towards whatever minimizes the chance of error, especially anoying hard to trace errors like the 'unintended globals' that I mentioned before. I have no issue if someone wants and specifically uses globals. But shouldnt have to guess that they are globals and that they are intentional. It is for these types of reasons that various rules of thumb (consult tillys homenode and nodes for various lists of them, and a link to good books on this subject) have developed. These rules are not set in stone but are followed by the vast majority of professional programmers because they do minimze the possibility of error in the long run. (Examples would be that code should be indented (heh you mentioned that facetiously and here I am addressing it seriously) between 2 and 8 spaces, with the optimal being 4 spaces, trying to ensure that subroutines are no more than 1 page long, putting short parts of a conditional before the long part.)

I think that perlstyle avoid this becuase the level of programmer it was intended for is expected to know of these conventions and issues to make an educated decison (as you have, all the credit to you) as to how they wish to procede. Howeve this site has monks of every level of expertise and accordingly it is a responsibility (IMO) of those of us with the expertise to proscribe best practice and not our personal preference. When the newbies know enough to argue they probably wont argue becuase they'll know th reasons why we are saying what we are saying to the newbies...

Cheers,

Yves / DeMerphq
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