Raku Books / Perl 6 at a Glance / Code Organization / Variables and signatures

Lexical variables

Lexical variables in Perl 6 are those declared with the my keyword. These variables are only visible within the block where they were declared. If you tried accessing them outside the scope, you’d get the error: Variable '$x' is not declared.

{
     my $x = 42;
     say $x; # This is fine
}
# say $x;    # This is not

To “extend” the scope, lexical variables can be used in closures. In the following example, the seq sub returns a block, which uses a variable defined inside the sub.

sub seq($init) {
     my $c = $init;
     return {$c++};
}

The sub returns a code block containing the variable $c. After the sub’s execution, the variable will not only still exist but also will keep its value, which you can easily see by calling a function by its reference a few times more.

my $a = seq(1);

say $a(); # 1
say $a(); # 2
say $a(); # 3

It is possible to create two independent copies of the local variable.

CodeBlockPlaceholder4raku-static my $a = seq(1); my $b = seq(42); CodeBlockPlaceholder5raku-static

say $a(); # 1 say $a(); # 2 say $b(); # 42 say $a(); # 3 say $b(); # 43 ```

Course navigation

← Variables and signatures   |   state variables →