my

my

my VARLIST

my TYPE VARLIST

my VARLIST : ATTRS

my TYPE VARLIST : ATTRS

A my declares the listed variables to be local (lexically) to the enclosing block, file, or eval- If more than one variable is listed, the list must be placed in parentheses-

The exact semantics and interface of TYPE and ATTRS are still evolving- TYPE may be a bareword, a constant declared with use constant , or __PACKAGE__. It is currently bound to the use of the fields pragma, and attributes are handled using the attributes pragma, or starting from Perl 5.8.0 also via the Attribute::Handlers module. See Private Variables via my() in perlsub for details, and fields, attributes, and Attribute::Handlers.

Note that with a parenthesised list, undef can be used as a dummy placeholder, for example to skip assignment of initial values:

my ( undef, $min, $hour ) = localtime;