It would be nice if you could declare inline functions explicitly rather than implicitly using this empty bracket "trick". I had no idea that Perl did this sort of magic for you under special circumstances. Maybe I haven't read enough of the latest Camel Book, because the older one didn't seem to make much of a big deal about it.

I think the reason I was so befuddled by it in the first place is because it didn't make any sense that Perl would do that sort of thing, I mean, other languages you've got to tell them to do this for you.