unless, of course, you add your variables by

## start with:
my $foo = shift;

## adding $bar yields:
my $foo = shift; 
my $bar = shift;
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it's a matter of style. if you're changing your style, it's safer to rewrite the code from scratch than to modify in place -- even (or especially) if it's only one statement.

~Particle *accelerates*

Huh? I thought it was rather clear from the documentation that shift doesn't care if you're using list context. It just always takes the first element off an array and returns it. What made you think otherwise?

my $this = shift;
my $x = shift;
...
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