makes no sence to me either, unless a colon is missing as in

Indeed, because without the binding colon you don't get the named binding behaviour. I'll speculate that it'll empty out %details and then assign it whatever is on the RHS.

Well, there are two things it could do. Either it is the same as %details{who} = "me", %details{why} = $because, which would make sence because of the unary * operator or it would be the same as %details = ();%details{who} = "me", %details{why} = $because, but then what usage is the * operator?

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