Is every frame in World of Warcraft global?

i'm getting into creating my first WoW addon and during my research I have read that every frame creaated in WoW is global which really confuses me.

I've seen plenty of addons that just do f = CreateFrame(..), so wouldn't those be conflicting all the time?

There's probably an easy explanation for this so sorry if the question is a bit dumb but if someone could clear that up for me I would really appreciate it

Every frame created from an XML file is global so that they can be accessed from a Lua file.

• hello.toc

## Interface: 90205
## Version: 1.0.0
## Title: Hello

hello.xml

• hello.xml

<Ui>
    <Script file="hello.lua"/>
    <Frame name="HelloWorldFrame"> <!-- global frame -->
        <Scripts>
            <OnLoad>
                HelloWorld_OnLoad(self)
            </OnLoad>
            <OnEvent>
                HelloWorld_OnEvent(self, event, ...)
            </OnEvent>
        </Scripts>
    </Frame>
</Ui>

• hello.lua

function HelloWorld_OnLoad(self)
    print("Loaded HelloWorldFrame")
    self:RegisterEvent("CHAT_MSG_SAY")
end

function HelloWorld_OnEvent(self, event, ...)
    print("Your character said something", event, ...)
end

While if you only use a Lua file and create your frame there you don't necessarily need to make it global.

local function OnEvent(self, event, ...)
    print("Your character said something", event, ...)
end

local f = CreateFrame("Frame")
f:RegisterEvent("CHAT_MSG_SAY")
f:SetScript("OnEvent", OnEvent)

I've seen plenty of addons that just do f = CreateFrame(..), so wouldn't those be conflicting all the time?

As long as they make it local, they wouldn't conflict. If everyone makes a global f frame then it would conflict yes.