At times even little things may prove confusing, thus here's my question (please bare with me since the topic is not overly exciting ;-)

Generally, I'm a fan of delimiting text in my code with qq| |; or qq~ ~; Here's an example:

my $text = qq~
First line
Second line
~;
[download]

print $text;

However, lately, I started to notice (i'm wondering if I simply ignored that aspect of Perl before) some monks using alternative delimiters such as <<. Out of curiosity, I gave it a try in one of my existing scripts. However, this failed to work miserably... as will be shown below.

Here's a sample tiny script that works:

print <<END
Hello there!
This is a test!
END
[download]

Here, I attempt to add an extra line just below print:

print <<END
Hello there!
This is a test!
END

my $i;
[download]

and this failes with the error:

syntax error at text_delim.pl line 11, near "my "
Global symbol "$i" requires explicit package name at text_delim.pl lin
+e 11.
[download]

Yet, when I add a ; below the line containing closing END, the error disappears and I can run script well.

print <<END
Hello there!
This is a test!
END
;
my $i;
[download]

Strange thing is, however, that I always assumed there should be no ';' after the closing line/word of the << text delimiter. Since, also a code like this always worked for me (strangely enough, I never noticed or paid much attention to the ';' after the first <<END either):

print <<END;
Hello there!
This is a test!
END

my $i;
[download]

Could anyone explain me why there should be a ';' in there at all? And also, why is it permissable to place ';' in either of the two places. What's the difference? Thanks.

"There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." -- Confession of Faith