Yes; because the "filehandle argument slot" (for lack of a better name) has to be a simple scalar value or a BLOCK. While it's superfluous in this particular case the block form is useful if you (for instance) have a hash of filehandles and want to use print { $handles->{$somekey} } "Yadda yadda yadda.\n"; directly rather than pulling it out into a tmp variable. The docs for print cover this.