I strongly recommend against using that interpolation trick. Just using interpolation takes one more character, is going to be a lot easier for people to pick up, and doesn't impose list context when scalar is more appropriate.

If the last bit didn't make sense to you, try it with localtime. Fighting central ideas of the language just to be able to use cool tricks isn't a very good tradeoff.

Now before you point out that heredocs don't allow you to break strings I should mention that they also wind up conflicting with my indentation. I therefore find that the qq() syntax works far better for me and is more flexible. (Unless, of course, your scripts are part of a bigger system and templating is a better idea than big fat heredocs.)