demerphq has the right of it...

Well to be picky i think that that code will have a minor incompatibility with the normal file test operators regarding the magic filehandle '_', since File::stat() shares this problem I dont think its a showstopper really. And I guess if one doesn't like the current filetest names its unlikely that one would be happy with using the special filehandle:

$filesize=-s _ if (-e $foo);
[download]

would become

$filesize=File::size($foo) if File::exists($foo);
[download]

Which is of course less efficient.