in reply to Strange syntax question

So, to translate the operational effect, the original author of that line of code seems to be using that one-liner to establish a default value for the parameter to Doit() in the event it is called without a parameter. Furthermore, maintenance of that default value is moved to the top of the source file for easy modification.

Nice trick. I think I'll be taking that one home today.

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Re^2: Strange syntax question
by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Aug 14, 2013 at 23:44 UTC

    Take it home and use it, certainly, but don't leave that loaded global variable lying around where it can hurt someone! 

    >perl -wMstrict -le
"use constant FOO => 'bar';
 ;;
 DoIt();
 ;;
 sub DoIt {
   my $it = shift // FOO;
   print qq{it is '$it'};
   }
"
it is 'bar'

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