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Mastering Modern Perl: Writing Efficient and Maintainable Code

Pitfalls and Misfeatures

Explore common pitfalls and misfeatures in Perl function usage, such as old-style ampersand invocation, prototype disabling, and ambiguous calls without parentheses. Understand how these issues can lead to confusing behavior, and learn how careful use of parentheses improves code clarity and maintainability.

We'll cover the following...

Old-style function syntax

Perl still supports old-style invocations of functions carried over from ancient versions of Perl. Previous versions of Perl required us to invoke functions with a leading ampersand (&) character:

Perl
# outdated style; avoid
my $result = &calculate_result( 52 );
# very outdated; truly avoid
$result = do &calculate_result( 42 );

The vestigial syntax is visual ...