$ perl -MO=Deparse -wE "say scalar('a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u');" Useless use of a constant ("a") in void context at -e line 1. Useless use of a constant ("e") in void context at -e line 1. Useless use of a constant ("i") in void context at -e line 1. Useless use of a constant ("o") in void context at -e line 1. BEGIN { $^W = 1; } use feature 'current_sub', 'evalbytes', 'fc', 'say', 'state', 'switch', 'unicode_strings', 'unicode_eval'; say scalar('???', '???', '???', '???', 'u'); -e syntax OK