You can't use <DATA> in a BEGIN block because that BEGIN block is executed at compile time, i.e. before the rest of the file is even parsed.

If you don't need BEGIN time, you could try to stuff your routine that works with the data into a CHECK or INIT block.

But it's hard to give an advise without knowing why you need which data at compile time.

In reply to Re: __DATA__ used in BEGIN by moritz
in thread __DATA__ used in BEGIN by Tabari

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