I used 5.6.1.

a: Undefined variable.

I'm susprised by the output you get. Is that really what you got for output? from perl? No, it's from your shell. Use single quotes.

Why does/should this work?

It's probably just an unintentional side-effect. It's to avoid ambiguitities when using indirect method calls. I wouldn't use :: as a quoting mechanism.

Updated: Thanks to japhy and jhourcle for the corrections/elaborations.

In reply to Re^3: ::'s role in strings by ikegami
in thread ::'s role in strings by eff_i_g

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