Also, since C<$x> is lexical, it can't be reached or modified by any Perl
code outside.
-You can initialize state variables, and the assigment will be executed
-only once:
-
- sub starts_from_42 { state $x = 42; return ++$x }
-
-You can also, as a syntactic shortcut, initialize more than one if they're
-all declared within the same state() clause:
-
- state ($a, $b, $c) = ( 'one', 'two', 'three' );
-
-However, be warned that state variables declared as part of a list will
-get assigned each time the statement will be executed, since it will be
-considered as a regular list assigment, not one to be executed only once:
-
- (state $x, my $y) = (1, 2); # $x gets reinitialized every time !
-
-B<Caveat>: the code at the right side of the assignment to a state
-variable will be executed every time; only the assignment is disabled. So,
-avoid code that has side-effects, or that is slow to execute. This might
-be optimized out in a future version of Perl.
+When combined with variable declaration, simple scalar assignment to C<state>
+variables (as in C<state $x = 42>) is executed only the first time. When such
+statements are evaluated subsequent times, the assignment is ignored. The
+behavior of this sort of assignment to non-scalar variables is undefined.
=head3 Persistent variables with closures
sub glob {
my $pat = shift;
my @got;
- local *D;
- if (opendir D, '.') {
- @got = grep /$pat/, readdir D;
- closedir D;
+ if (opendir my $d, '.') {
+ @got = grep /$pat/, readdir $d;
+ closedir $d;
}
return @got;
}
C<glob>, the C<< <*> >> glob operator is overridden as well.
In a similar fashion, overriding the C<readline> function also overrides
-the equivalent I/O operator C<< <FILEHANDLE> >>.
+the equivalent I/O operator C<< <FILEHANDLE> >>. Also, overriding
+C<readpipe> also overrides the operators C<``> and C<qx//>.
Finally, some built-ins (e.g. C<exists> or C<grep>) can't be overridden.