to make it clear that it's a function call, parentheses make the most sense.
Really? That's something uniformly agreed on? People write +shift for the purpose of being unclear?

I disagree. I couldn't care less whether you find parentheses or unary minus more or less clear, or what makes the most sense to you. But you will find me disagreeing with you each and every time you make such statements as if they are undeniable universal truths.

But using a + instead of the parentheses
It's not instead of parentheses. It's instead of using an argument. Or using it in a longer expression. Or instead of parenthesis around the function call. It's just one of many ways to make it not like a bareword.

In reply to Re^4: What is the + in +shift doing here? by Anonymous Monk
in thread What is the + in +shift doing here? by tphyahoo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.