Pay attention to the "if it looks like a function, it IS a function" rule. If a bare identifier is followed by an opening paren, even with whitespace in between, the paren set is taken to be part of the sub call, and whatever follows it, is NOT.

print (1 + 2) * 3;  # prints: 3, not 9
print (split)[1];   # syntax error

print ((1 + 2) * 3);  # prints 9
print((1 + 2) * 3);   # same
print +(1 + 2) * 3;   # same
print ((split)[1]);   # works as expected
print((split)[1]);    # same
print +(split)[1];    # same
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The + doesn't *do* anything, but it is not a paren so it breaks the function() parsing.

In Perl 5, split sees any string given as the pattern as a regex (unless the string is " ", a single normal ASCII space). It is better to write /_/ instead of '_', to make this clear to readers of your code, and to avoid getting hurt when you want / / and write ' ' instead.

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Perl 6 changes:

• unary + is no longer a no-op, but provides Num context to its RHS
• the parens are only seen as function call parens (rather than grouping parens) if the opening paren comes directly after the sub name, with no whitespace in between
• you can put a dot in between subname and subcall paren, and left of that you are allowed to use whitespace
• split is directly accessible with .[] or [] (e.g. split("_", $foo)[1])

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