The previous section described a way to share variables between different files which are included from /base.html, by using the same package across all the files. However this doesn't help us much when dealing with the method files such as subs.html, because these files have to have their own packages - so we are back to square one.

There is another way to share variables across even different packages, and that is by using namespaces. For variables that need to be accessible even from subs.html, you could use a namespace which is specific to your website. For example, if your website domain is mydomain.com, then you could create variables using the form

$mydomain::xxx = "hello";

As long as you then make sure that you only use this namespace on this website (and other websites on the same Apache web server use their own namespaces), then you shouldn't get any conflicts. Once again, use this with caution, since you introduce the possibility of inadvertently sharing variables between completely different websites. For example, if you cut and paste some useful code from one website to another, you will need to make sure you change the namespace of any globals. Otherwise, you could get some very obscure bugs, since different requests to the various websites could conflict.

You also need to be careful about variable initialization, since these globals will now exist between different requests. So, it's possible that if you don't re-initialize a global variable, then it may contain some random value from a previous request. This can result in obscure bugs. Just be careful to initialize all variables properly and you'll be fine.

Finally, note that Embperl will only clean up variables which don't have an explicit package (i.e. are in one of the packages automatically set up by Embperl). Variables in other namespaces are not automatically cleaned up. As a result, you need to pay closer attention to cleaning up if you use your own namespaces. The safe way to clean up a variable is simply to 'undef' it.