Warn on my $i = .... if .... ?

I was recently bitten by this "unexpected" behaviour:

    sub inc {
        my $static if 0;
        print $static++;
    }
    inc; inc; inc; inc;

(This prints 0123, instead of the 0000 you would get when the 'if 0' is
removed.)

...and I found this rather old thread in the p5p archives, which not only
discusses whether this violates the "principle of least surprise" but steps
through some of the gory details:
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-05/msg00686.html

One of the outcomes was a suggestion (by Barrie Slaymaker) to produce a
warning when such code was encountered. This didn't seem to ever happen, so
I wanted to find out what the current opinions are on adding this warning?


- Karen Etheridge, karen@etheridge.ca

• Warn on my $i = .... if .... ? by Karen Etheridge
• Re: Warn on my $i = .... if .... ? by Zefram
• Re: Warn on my $i = .... if .... ? by David Golden
• Re: Warn on my $i = .... if .... ? by Karen Etheridge