Because curly brackets (braces) are used for several other things
including BLOCKs, you may occasionally have to disambiguate braces
at the beginning of a statement by putting a "+" or a "return" in
front so that Perl realizes the opening brace isn't starting a
BLOCK.  The economy and mnemonic value of using curlies is deemed
worth this occasional extra hassle.

##</code><code>##

The leading "+{" and "{;" always serve to disambiguate the expres-
sion to mean either the HASH reference, or the BLOCK.