It's a -sort of- bug. perl 5.10 actually throws a warning when you trip it, and provides a 'state $x' keyword that provides the same functionality as 'my $x if

It's a -sort of- bug. perl 5.10 actually throws a warning when you trip it, and provides a 'state $x' keyword that provides the same functionality as 'my $x if 0' safely. The basic problem is that the 'my' causes a lexical pad entry to be generated at compile time, but because the if 0 prevents the statement running at runtime it doesn't get reinitialised on your way round the loop. (I've also made this comment on your blog, but it's the sort of thing people should manage to find easily so I figured it'd be ok to duplicate it)