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How can I simulate a static variable (like in C) in Perl?

{
	my $secret_val = 0;
	sub gimme_another {
		return ++$secret_val;
	}
}
    

$secret_val now becomes unreachable by the outside world, but retains its value between calls to gimme_another.

This works fine, since $secret_val goes out of scope, but is not garbage-collected since it's still being referenced.

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