i've found named parameters extremely helpful. in fact, perl 5.008 has made them even better, thanks to locked hashes (the pseudo-hash replacement.) enter Hash::Util...

#/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
$|++;

require 5.008;
use Hash::Util;

my %hash= (
    one => undef,
    two => 2,
    three => 'abc',
);

Hash::Util::lock_keys( %hash );

print $_,$/ for keys %hash;

## causes runtime error
$hash{add}= 'yes';
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now i can both provide default values in my modules or subroutines, and automatically handle errors when extraneous parameters are passed. also, specific keys can be locked, so you can create a hash of constants.

that allows me to delete all my code like

defined $hash{$key} 
    or die $key, ' is not valid';
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because Hash::Util::lock_hash handles it for me! aah, Hash::Util.

~Particle *accelerates*