I don't find anything particularly irritating about that with the exception of its formatting. It really isn't that hard to line up the assignment operators.

You've already gotten a few good reasons to do it. I might add readability to the list. Especially if the value is used repeatedly, it is a lot easier to quickly read $real_name than $q->param('real_name') in a line full of other code.

Another reason might be the desire to use string interpolation. I think

print "Hello $real_name!\n";
[download]

is much nicer than

print 'Hello ', $q->param('real_name'), "\n";
[download]

is. Also, with <<HERE documents, using variables becomes a necessity¹.

1. That is, if you want to avoid ugly constructs such as the one Aristotle mentions in his reply. ;-)

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

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