I've been bitten by that a couple times before. One work-around is to say: 
my %hash;
BEGIN { %hash = (...); }

[download]
It'd be nice to be able to say that all at once, like: my %hash = BEGIN { (...) }; as merlyn has asked about to the P5P.
_____________________________________________________
Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

In reply to Re: Mini-rant about 'strict' by japhy
in thread Mini-rant about 'strict' by Ovid

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