In the C programming language one can designate a variable to be a static variable. This means it gets initialized only once and it sticks around retaining its old value between function calls.

In Perl, the same can be achieved using the state variable which is available starting from version 5.10, but there is a construct that will work in every version of Perl 5. In a way it is even more powerful.

Let's create a counter as an example:

state variable

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

sub count {
    state $counter = 0;
    $counter++;
    return $counter;
}

say count();
say count();
say count();

#say $counter;

In this example, instead of using my to declare the internal variable, we used the state keyword.

$counter is initialized to 0 only once, the first time we call counter(). In subsequent calls, the line state $counter = 0; does not get executed and $counter has the same value as it had when we left the function the last time.

Thus the output will be:

1
2
3

If we removed the # from last line, it would generate a Global symbol "$counter" requires explicit package name at ... line ... error when trying to compile the script. This just shows that the variable $counter is not accessible outside the function.

state is executed in the first call

Check out this strange example:

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

sub count {
    state $counter = say "world";
    $counter++;
    return $counter;
}

say "hello";
say count();
say count();
say count();

This will print out

hello
world
2
3
4

showing that the state $counter = say "world"; line only gets executed once. In the first call to count() say, which was also added in version 5.10, will return 1 upon success.

static variables in the "traditional" way

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

{
    my $counter = 0;
    sub count {
        $counter++;
        return $counter;
    }
}

say count();
say count();
say count();

This provides the same result as the above version using state, except that this could work in older versions of perl as well. (Especially if I did not want to use the say keyword, that was also introduced in 5.10.)

This version works because functions declarations are global in perl - so count() is accessible in the main body of the script even though it was declared inside a block. On the other hand the variable $counter is not accessible from the outside world because it was declared inside the block. Lastly, but probably most importantly, it does not get destroyed when we leave the count() function (or when the execution is outside the block), because the existing count() function still references it.

Thus $counter is effectively a static variable.

First assignment time

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

say "hi";

{
    my $counter = say "world";
    sub count {
        $counter++;
        return $counter;
    }
}

say "hello";
say count();
say count();
say count();

hi
world
hello
2
3
4

This shows that in this case too, the declaration and the initial assignment my $counter = say "world"; happens only once, but we can also see that the assignment happens before the first call to count() as if the my $counter = say "world"; statement was part of the control flow of the code outside of the block.

Shared static variable

This "traditional" or "home made" static variable has an extra feature. Because it does not belong to the the count() subroutine, but to the block surrounding it, we can declare more than one functions in that block and we can share this static variable between two or even more functions.

For example we could add a reset_counter() function:

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

{
    my $counter = 0;
    sub count {
        $counter++;
        return $counter;
    }

    sub reset_counter {
        $counter = 0;
    }
}


say count();
say count();
say count();

reset_counter();

say count();
say count();

1
2
3
1
2

Now both functions can access the $counter variable, but still nothing outside the enclosing block can access it.

Static arrays and hashes

As of now, you cannot use the state declaration in list context. This means you cannot write state @y = (1, 1);. This limitation could be overcome by some extra coding. For example in this implementation of the Fibonacci series, we checked if the array is empty and set the default values:

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

sub fib {
   state @y;
   @y = (1, 1) if not @y; # workaround initialization
   push @y, $y[0]+$y[1];
   return shift @y; 
}

say fib();
say fib();
say fib();
say fib();
say fib();

Alternatively we could use the "old-style" static variable with the enclosing block.

Here is the example generating the Fibonacci series:

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

{
   my @y = (1, 1);
   sub fib {
      push @y, $y[0]+$y[1];
      return shift @y; 
   }
}

say fib();
say fib();
say fib();
say fib();
say fib();