The parser knows about print as a keyword. It's been a special case as far back as I can remember (Perl 1?). You can look at it as an indirect method call from the language level, but the parser doesn't need heuristics because the grammar has a specific rule for the print $filehandle case.

In reply to Re^5: perl 5.12 BSD portability (CPAN test result)...print by chromatic
in thread perl 5.12 BSD portability (CPAN test result)...print by perl-diddler

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