Course of Raku / Advanced / Modules / Packages and namespaces 🆕

Namespaces and our

The our declarator is what makes something visible in its namespace. A variable declared with my is lexical — private to its block — whereas one declared with our is also a package variable, reachable from outside through the :: path:

module Counter {
    our $count = 0;  # package variable
    my  $secret = 42; # lexical, not visible outside
}

say $Counter::count; # 0

$Counter::count works because count was declared with our; $Counter::secret would fail, because secret is lexical.

Namespaces can nest. A package inside a package builds a longer :: path:

module Outer {
    module Inner {
        our $val = 42;
    }
}

say $Outer::Inner::val; # 42

The full name $Outer::Inner::val walks from the outer namespace, into the inner one, to the variable. This is exactly how the standard library is organised — names like IO::Socket::INET are nested namespaces — and how a module you write groups its parts under one top-level name.

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Namespaces and our

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