in reply to Just Another Perl Hacker,

This term is quite clever:

\* || {}

Take a reference to the typeglob *| (obtaining something like GLOB(0x23d84f0)) and OR it with the stringified value of {} (which is something like HASH(0x217f328). The strings "GLOB" and "HASH" when ORed together as "GLOB"|"HASH" evaluate to "OM_J". The character at index 3 is J.

The whitespace obfuscated well because it looks more intuitive than the actual syntax. Here is how it parses:

\*| | {}

Dave