or you could just do use constant MYCONST => XXXas stupid as it is. sometimes aliasing 1 and 0 to true and false is handy for readability. While we all know that 0 is false and 1 is true, it makes it easier, for those of us who have a nosy boss who wants to see your code but knows nothing about programming, if you write self-documenting/easy to read code. The big advantage to using use constant that I have found is that they are bareword operators, so you spend less time trying to remember whats a constant and whats not.