ultimatebb.cgi employs the obsolete "use vars" instead of "our", presumably for compatibility with older Perl versions.

I've used "our" in my scripts, but don't completely understand how it works (although I've mostly been able to get it to work by trial and error).

Is "our" equivalent to "use vars"?

For example, if, on a system running Perl 5.6+, the "use vars qw(%vars_poll ... $title_wording);" in ultimatebb.cgi were replaced with "our (%vars_poll ... $title_wording);", would the script function the same way?

yes it should, though if it follows the my() pragma, it probably will want comma delimeters. interesting read here as to performance benefits/etc: http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/guide/performance/Global_vs_Fully_Qualified_Varia.html

You're correct about the commas, I forgot to include them above.

Thanks for the answer and the helpful link.

I think I had misunderstood the function of our. Unlike my, our doesn't allocate space for a variable, it just provides a lexically-scoped alias. Since I generally prefer using fully qualified variables, perhaps I was trying to forcibly use our in situations where it wasn't really needed.

Correct... our is for scoping. I believe it can work across packages but to tell you the truth, I don't know for sure because I never use it. All the stuff I do needs to stay compatible with perl versions < 5.6.x so I can't use it