perl cookbook and compile error

[awingnut]

I am trying to use the perl cookbook to write a script to process POP mail (Recipe 18.5) and getting a compile error. The problem code is:

use strict:
use Net::POP3;

my $pop=Net::POP3->new("mail.mydomain.com")
   or die "Mail server not responding: ",$!,"\n";
defined ($pop->login("username","password"))
   or die "Login failed: ",$!,"\n";

The error I'm getting on the second statement is : Global symbol "$pop" requires explicit package name ...

Why does it think $pop is global when I've already declared it as local? Is the cookbook wrong or am I missing something basic that the cookbook assumes? TIA.

 

[ishnid]

You have a colon after `use strict'. It should be a semicolon. Change that and see if that helps.

 

[awingnut]

Thanks for the reply. That was a copy and paste error. The script has a semicolon.

 

[ishnid]

With that fixed and an appropriate shebang line that compiles perfectly well for me:

$ perl -c test2.pl
test2.pl syntax OK
$ perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.7 built for i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi
(with 1 registered patch, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2005, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on
this system using `man perl' or `perldoc perl'.  If you have access to the
Internet, point your browser at [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.perl.org/,[/URL] the Perl Home Page.

 

[awingnut]

Not good. Some kind of perl implementation problem maybe? This was under OS X (10.4.5).