Hmmm, very true. Why didn't I think of that? So looking at Perl 5.6 delta

Some highlights you didn't mention:

• Better threads (but superceded by 5.8 threads)
• Better subroutine attributes
• 3 arg open (you touched on it above)
• CHECK blocks
• lvalue subs
• Improvements in subroutine calling speed

The 3 arg open looks very useful for more concise code. Code speedups are always nice. :-) What are CHECK blocks? Piers Cawley (through Google) tells me that:

So, what's a CHECK block? The idea is that they're supposed to be called after compilation is completed. They're intended to be used by the compiler backends, to save the program state once everything's been assembled into an op tree. However, there's no reason why you can't use them for other things instead.

Anyone come up with a use for a CHECK block other than a backend compiler writer?

So what about lvalue subs? When would they be useful? IIRC, they simply mean you can do my_sub() = 'foo'. But I've never run into a situation where this would be useful.

And finally, what about attributes? I've been looking at Maypole and it uses attributes to mark methods callable sub method_name :Exportable { } via the URL ("/appbase/table/edit/id"). Any pointers to good documentation about attributes and how they can make life better?