Thanks to kelan, perrin, sauoq, WBT, larsen, dpuu, and nite_man for the replies. You all were correct in assuming that I didn't want to use

  use constant PIE => "Warm Apple";
[download]

I find

print "The value of PIE is ${ \PIE }.\n";
[download]

or even

 print "pie: ", PIE, "\n";
[download]

not pleasing to read or write. The former is truly ugly, and the later looks a bit like a filehandle.

Also, I have an existing code base with lots of scalar variables that are actually constants, so dpuu's solution is easiest to implement for me.

Cheers

--Fred

---

Nothing is too wonderful to be true
-- Michael Faraday