I wasn't saying that BEGIN is never useful. I was talking about in the situation at hand.

But even in your entirely different scenario, does it really make sense? 

perl -nle'BEGIN { $prod = 1; } $prod *= $_; END { print $prod; }'

[download]

vs 

perl -le'$prod = 1; $prod *= $_ while <>; print $prod;'

[download]

In reply to Re^3: Initialize variable in BEGIN by ikegami
in thread Initialize variable in BEGIN by BillKSmith

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