Variable scoping

Just as with loops, there are important aspects to variable scoping that one should be familiar with for conditional statements. As an example,

use strict;
my $amount_owed = 0;
my $status;
if ($amount_owed <= 0) {
  $status = 'good';
}
print qq{The status is $status\n};

will run under use strict;, but

use strict;
my $amount_owed = 0;
if ($amount_owed <= 0) {
  my $status = 'good';
}
print qq{The status is $status\n};

will not, because $status will only be defined within the if() { } block, and thus is not defined within the print statement.