"... ms windows ... XP in Virtualbox where the version of Perl requires &subname()"

I don't see how WinXP has any bearing on this. I have a very old laptop, that I probably only use a couple of times a year: it runs WinXP and has Perl installed. I've never had any reason to use '&subname()' for any Perl code on that machine.

I don't see the relevance of mentioning VirtualBox. I've certainly run Perl code under VirtualBox/WinXP for cross-platform testing purposes in the past: again, I've never had any reason to use '&subname()'.

What version of Perl are you running that you think requires '&subname()'?

If you run the following, do you get the the same result that I show?

$ perl -le 'sub test { 42 } print test(); print &test()'
42
42
[download]

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.