Thanks for the reply, this is a great reference. Subroutines like these are exactly the kinds of things I was hoping to see. They solve the autovivication problem that happens before the test...

Still I have to admit they are sort of clunky subroutines, I have to wonder how fast they are and if there is a better way of doing this yet...

Also, I think it's very interesting that it states: "Many people think that exists and defined should fail at the first level thay can." and then goes on to say: "This issue has been argued heavily in various fora including p5p but it won't be changed as too much code works with the current behavior. It is the way Perl treats it and you can't directly get around it. Perl6 has been discussing this and may do something to support this and it could be controlled by a pragma. But there are still gray areas..."

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