perl: our vs use vars

B.6.5. The vars Pragma
In the rare case that you truly need a global variable while use strict is in effect, you may declare it with the vars pragma.[407] This package-scoped pragma tells Perl that you are intentionally using one or more global variables:

If your program will never be used with a version of Perl prior to 5.6, you should use the our keyword instead of the vars pragma.

use strict;
use vars qw/ $fred $barney /;

$fred = "This is a global variable, but that's all right.\n";

31.21. use vars

use vars qw($frobbed @munge %seen);

This pragma, once used to declare a global variable, is now somewhat deprecated in favor of the our modifier. The previous declaration is better accomplished using:

our($frobbed, @munge, %seen);

or even:

our $frobbed = "F";
our @munge = "A" .. $frobbed;
our %seen = ();

No matter which of these you use, remember that they're talking about package globals, not file-scoped lexicals.



8.232. vars

Pragma that, given a list of variable names, predeclares all variables in the list, making sure they are available to routines with delayed loading (e.g., routines loaded by the AutoLoader or SelfLoader). This allows you to use the variables under use strict. The vars pragma also disables warnings about typographical errors.

use vars qw($var1 @var2 %var3);