If you're using the current development version of Perl (5.9) or when the next stable version (5.10) is released, you'll be able to write
Or if you build a 5.8.x perl with the appropriate dor-* patch from http://perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/H/HM/HMBRAND/

In reply to Re^2: Pass an optional parameter to a subroutine by ysth
in thread Pass an optional parameter to a subroutine by ocs

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