Hi opaltoot,

See Assignment Operators:

... the scalar assignment operator produces a valid lvalue. Modifying an assignment is equivalent to doing the assignment and then modifying the variable that was assigned to. This is useful for modifying a copy of something, like this:

($tmp = $global) =~ tr/13579/24680/;
[download]

... Likewise,

($x += 2) *= 3;
[download]

is equivalent to

$x += 2;
$x *= 3;
[download]

Hope this helps,
-- Hauke D