Though an older version of perl would have given a helpful error message on the use 5.010; line...

"helpful" is quite a stretch. The message produced is just as unhelpful and uninformative as the source code line. As was demonstrated, one or both of them gave the recipient not the slightest clue that "//" wouldn't work. So, "use 5.010;" didn't actually help. At most it just induced surprise which was worked around in the obvious manner. Hard to expect otherwise.

All "use 5.010;" does is add a layer to obscure the real problem that people will actually end up dealing with (though, it often just adds a problem layer when there isn't even a problem underneath).

I had proposed ways to drastically improve how helpful it could be. More importantly, those would drastically reduce how often it would be pointlessly obstructive. Unfortunately, the lastest bizarre magic tied to such constructs makes the feature impossible to improve in an any meaningful way.

- tye        

The reason why I started Syntax::Construct.
لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ

Yes, you're right. Maybe dirtdog omitted it for some reason. I can hardly see another explanation. Well, let's wait for dirtdog's explanation...

I did omit the "use 5.010" statement only after i tried to execute the code without success. I thought that might have something to do with the error. The workaround provided by Laurent does work...so i'm all set now. Thanks again to everyone who responded.