use strict; behaviour not working as expected in Perl wrt $a and $b

Question

I have written a sample perl code: ``` use strict; use warnings; $a=1; $b=2; if($b==2) { $a=3; } print $a; ``` Ideally, when I run this code, it should give an error as 'Global symbol "$a" requires explicit package name...' But it is not giving any error. It gives the output as '3'. Why so? As far as I know, if we use strict, then we need to define the scope of the variable otherwise it gives an error. Is my understanding wrong?

Accepted Answer

`$a` and `$b` are special variables, and thus are not rising error when used with `strict`.

From `perldoc strict`,

Because of their special use by sort(), the variables $a and $b are exempted from this check.

use strict; behaviour not working as expected in Perl wrt $a and $b

Solution

Problem