A final point, i tried to move the subroutine definition below the code calling it (I like to keep all my subs at the bottom), but i get an error: Can't call method "nForX" without a package or object reference at ./test.pl line 617.

It seems you'll need to add a forward declaration with the prototype in order to move the sub definition below the calling code.

sub nForX(&@);
...
nForX {
    print join ' ', @_;
} 3, \( @a, @b, @c );
...
sub nForX(&@) { #use of prototype here is actually irrelevant 
                #now, i.e. sub nForX {...} works the same
... }
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