While waiting for the speculated "defined" version of "||", I wrote def -- Deal nicely with undefined values. That simplifies your second case:     $foo = def( $bar, $default_for_foo ); Throwing together something for exists I came up with this:     $a = has( a=>$hashref, $default_for_a ); I replaced $foo with $hashref in my example above.

Here is what has() looks like:

sub has {
    my( $key, $hv, $val, $force )= @_;
    if(  exists $hv->{$key}  ) {
        $val= $hv->{$key};
    } elsif(  ! defined wantarray  ||  $force  ) {
        $hv->{$key}= $val;
    }
    return $val;
}
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Petruchio has been talking about creating a module to provide fairly simple tools like this that allow you to replace idiomatic constructs with simpler (more natural) constructs. I'll think has() and def() are worth including. (:

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")