I can't see any use for __DATA__ exept for some quick hacks. Generally you rather need to divide the program to smaller chunks for better management of the complexity (this is not a theoretical rule but rather something I've learned from practice). So when a piece of logic/data can be so easily extracted from the program that you put it in the __DATA__ area I'd rather put it in a separate file. And you can reverse the extraction with PAR as allready mentioned.