Re: lexical variables made default

[Jeremy Howard]

J. David Blackstone said:
> Prior to version 5, all implementations of Perl were designed with
> only dynamic variables in mind.  Perl5 provided lexical variables in a
> backward compatible way.  Perl6 should make lexical variables the default.
> ...
That's certainly a nice idea. However, a lot of scripts will break if you do
this (we wouldn't reach the 80% of scripts 100% compatible, I'm pretty
sure).

I base this assertion on our learnings from mod_perl--few scripts written
without 'use strict' can be used in mod_perl directly, due to assumptions
being made in scripts about behaviour of global variables.

Perhaps there should be a 'use dynamic' pragma that can be added to any
script that needs the perl 5 scoping. That way although scripts will break,
a band-aid fix will be very simple (just add the pragma).

More generally, how do people feel about compatibility through pragmas? When
we talk about the 80% hurdle for compatibility, could this be only if a 'use
perl5' or similar pragma were used (which would enable things like dynamic
scoping)?

--
  Jeremy Howard
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]