Just wanted to say that the standard way of doing this is not to parethesize the shift, but to put a + in front of it. This is perls way of ensuring that whatever follows the plus is construed as code and not something else. Note that this is NOT the same as 0+shift, which coerces numeric context.

This is IME particularly useful with print and with hash keys.

print +($.>10) ? "Skipped." : "Ok";
$foo{+shift}=10;
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--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....