Newbie... Strict Compilation mode

[Jim Bufalini]

Richmond Mathewson wrote:

> May be this is a goofy question; but it can probably bear
> the asking one more time:
> 
> What, if any, is the advantage of declaring variables in RR ?

- Unles yu ar an perfct typst who has nevr made a typo and nevar use a speel
checker, explicitVariables instantly indicates a speling eror at compile tim
and alows you too quikly corect.
- This is also very helpful to people to whom English is a second language
and English spelling is not intuitive and they can and often do put one r
or l in one place and two r's or ll's in another and other such typical
English spelling errors.
- It allows you to distinguish globals from script locals and constants both
at the script level and handler level.
- It allows you to declare globals from inside a handler (which creates a
"semi" global that is only available to other handlers that also declare the
same global). 
- It makes your code much more readable, not only to others, but to
yourself, when you are troubleshooting a problem weeks or months or years
later.
- It is "polite" to others with whom you may want to share your code and
they have explicitVariables turned on. They are not going to turn it off for
a large project just to look at few lines of your code.
- If you use GLX2, it allows GLX2 to offer you variable completion after
typing four chars of a declared variable name.
- The reason the name was changed is probably because it also checks that
you have not spelled reserved words incorrectly. *set the locaton of this
stack to screnLoc* will not give a compile time error if Strict Compilation
Mode is turned off. If it is on, you get an error. If you are just learning
the language, this is big help.

Lastly, although you can "create" variables without declaration, the fact
is, variables cannot be created on-the-fly at runtime. Only array variables
and custom property variables can be created on-the-fly. Otherwise, you must
use a *do* statement, which has limitations, is slow because it is complied
at runtime  and can be tedious and error prone to write a long one. All
other variables are whatever you typed on compile.

So, given these facts, the real question is:

What, if any, is the advantage of NOT declaring variables? ;-)

Aloha from Hawaii,

Jim Bufalini