Actually, it can easily get out of whack: ... Now the maintenance programmer must ask: is this really the intent ... or is it a typo?

Why must he ask that?

Using the name once only makes the intent clearer, that is: makes it clear, at a glance, that the intent is to update a single hash, while gives the maintenance programmer a headache.

All three are equally clear at a glance (I glanced at them, equally clear, no headache)

Finally, with: to rename the foo hash to a better name you must change it in two places, rather than one, so there is (an admittedly small) chance of error when you are doing search-and-replace in your editor (code refactoring IDEs help here).

Well, if you're going to change the name, you already have to change it in more place than that one line ... and if you make a mistake, perl will tell you, as will your test suite ...

But why would you have to rename the hash to a better name after writing lines of code? Why wouldn't you start with a better name to begin with in the start if the beginning before writing the many lines of code? :D

In reply to Re^6: Convert undef to empty string in a hash by Anonymous Monk
in thread Convert undef to empty string in a hash by ibm1620

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